"Expect nothing from her weakness—never hope to see her again. It is with me—not a weak, loving, forgiving woman, you have to deal."
"With you—her father's clownish farmer-boy—my own servant."
"I have no words to throw away, and you will need them to defend yourself," answered Jacob, with firm self-possession. "You have committed, within the last twenty-four hours, two crimes against the law. You have married a woman, knowing your wife to be alive. I am the witness, I, her playmate when she was a little girl, her protector and faithful servant in the trouble and sin which you heaped upon her after she was a woman. I went with her to the hotel that night, I witnessed all—all—to the scene last evening. Let that pass, for it should pass, rather than have her history connected with yours before the world. But another crime. This forged check—this attempt to ruin as warm-hearted and honest a boy as ever lived. In this, her name cannot, from necessity, appear; for this you shall suffer to the extent of the law; for this, you shall live year after year in prison, not from revenge, mark, but that she, Ada Wilcox, may breathe in peace. Leave this house, sir, quietly, for I must not have a felon arrested beneath her roof. Go anywhere you like, for a few hours, not to the hotel, for Robert Otis is waiting in your chamber with an officer; not to ferry, or steamboat, in hopes of escaping; men are placed everywhere to stop you; but till noon you are safe from arrest."
"I will not leave this house without speaking with Ada," said Leicester, in a whisper so deep and fierce, that it came through his clenched teeth like the hiss of a wounded adder.
"Five minutes you have for deliberation; go forth quietly, and as a departing guest, or remain to be marshalled out by half a dozen men, whom the chief of police has sent to protect the grounds—you understand, to protect the grounds."
Leicester did not speak, but a sharp, fiendish gloom shot into his eyes, and he thrust one hand beneath his snowy vest, and drew it slowly out; then came the sharp click of a pocket pistol. Jacob watched the motion, and his heavy features stirred with a smile.
"You forget that I am your servant; that I laid out your wedding dress, and loaded the pistol; put it up, sir—as I told you before, when I play with rattlesnakes, I take a hard grip on the neck."
Leicester drew his hand up deliberately, and dashed the pistol in Jacob's face. The stout man recoiled a step, and blood flowed from his lips. It was fortunate for him that Leicester had found the revolver which he was in the habit of wearing too heavy for his wedding garments. As it was, he took out a silk handkerchief, and coolly wiped the blood from his mouth, casting now and then a look at the tiny clock upon the mantel-piece. The fiendish smile excited by the sight of his enemy's blood was just fading from Leicester's lip, when Jacob put the handkerchief back in his pocket.
"You will save a few hours of liberty by departing at once," he said. "To a man, who has nothing but prison walls before him, they should be worth something."
"Yes, much can be done in a few hours," muttered Leicester to himself, and gently settling his hat, he turned to go.