"There are no risks, Cousin, which I would not run."
"'Tis nobly said," he remarked, without attempting this time to conceal the sarcastic smile which played round his sensuous lips. "Odd's fish! the man whom you have honoured with such sublime devotion is lucky beyond compare."
"A truce on your sneers, Sir John," she retorted imperiously; "you said that there were several ways whereby that hateful marriage could be annulled. What are they?"
Sir John Ayloffe glanced down the length of his elegant surcoat; with careful hand he smoothed out a wrinkle which had appeared in the well-fitting breeches just above his knee, he readjusted the set of his fringed scarf, and of his lace-edged cravat. All this took time and kept Mistress Julia on tenter hooks, the while she felt as if her temples would burst from their throbbing.
Then, at last, Cousin John looked up at her again.
"Poison," he said drily; "an Italian stiletto an you prefer that method. An hired assassin in any event—"
A shudder ran down her spine. Had she really harboured these thoughts herself, and had Cousin John merely put her wild imaginings into words? Thus crudely put they horrified her—for the moment—and she looked down almost with loathing on the man who accompanied each grim suggestion with a leer, which caused his thick lips to part and to disclose a row of large, uneven teeth stained with tobacco juice and giving his face a cruel expression like that of a hyena.
"You see, there are always means, fair Cousin," continued Sir John with pleasing urbanity; "it is only a question of money—and of the risks which one is prepared to run. Beyond that, I believe, that the task, though difficult, can be accomplished in Paris. There are some amiable gentry there ever ready to do your bidding, whatever it may be, provided you are generous—"
She passed the gossamer handkerchief over her dry lips.