“Ay,” said Lucretia, abstractedly; “and if detection comes, it may secure a refuge from the gibbet. Give me the ring.”
“A refuge more terrible than the detection,” said Varney,—“beware of such a thought,” as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring on her finger.
“And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,—to compose your countenance and your thoughts. I will send for the physician.”
Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he withdrew.
So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at what he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible that he could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to rescue his beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the fate hovering nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall to the threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes still downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. At that very moment Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their eyes met: his were fascinated as the bird’s by the snake’s. At the sight, all her craft, her intellect, returned. With a glance, she comprehended the terrible danger that awaited her. Before he was aware of her movement, she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in his ear.
“Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are—”
Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence rather of fear than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him still, and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness of the blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and fierceness. He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did so, she placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm that had smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had fastened into the flesh. This but exasperated him to new efforts. He extricated himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed into a smile of scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay before the threshold, he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped. No thought had he of tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human shambles, of denouncing Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master, warn, and shield him,—that was the sole thought which crossed his confused, bewildered brain.
It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned, half-senseless, lay upon those floors,—for besides the violence of her fall, the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony of apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,—when Varney entered.
“They tell me she sleeps,” he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But Varney’s step, Varney’s voice, had awakened Lucretia’s reason to consciousness and the sense of peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had passed.
“Fly, fly!” she gasped, as she concluded. “Fly, to detain, to secrete, this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then; I have done the rest!” and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word, but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he sprang on his back,—