Her congratulation was a deep sigh, a gesture of despair, and a scarcely audible whisper: “It is too late.”
“No!” I exclaimed firmly. “I don’t and won’t believe that. And I hold too strong a hand now for any one to beat me.”
My firmness told. She looked up with the dawn of hope in her eyes, and if I could read it, something beside hope, something far dearer to me.
“My hand on it,” I said, stretching it out.
She was about to place hers in it, when the servant announced Inez. On watchdog duty again, of course. I gave her the letter and whispered quickly: “Take this now. You know what is in it. I have other news for you—I have rescued Vasco.”
CHAPTER XVI
BAROSA’S SECRET
I STAYED a few minutes after Inez’ arrival so that she should not think she had scared me away, and I left the house more in love with Miralda than ever and convinced that had she been free the interview would have had a very different result.
I saw Barosa’s sinister influence behind. Sampayo had evidently told him at once what I had done; he had instantly sent instructions to Miralda to take the letter but not to read it; and his power over her was too great for her to dare to disobey.
To break down his influence appeared impossible; it meant a fight against the whole forces of this infernal conspiracy. And then a somewhat wild, harum-scarum alternative occurred to me—to carry her away from it all on the Stella. Vasco was out of danger, and so far as she herself was in danger from the Government, she could smile at it when we were once in old England.
Vasco was already on the yacht. Could I use him to get her there? And if I did, would she resent my trick or come to view it as the best, if not the only way out?