He took a step towards her; but she backed from him, and cried out in a sudden triumphant voice:
“I can tell her!—the white woman who would set her wit against steel. See now if she can!”
In a moment she had snapped her hands to the front—and a bright blade was in one of them—and she was running to where Miss Angela was seated at the table.
Tuke was upon the mad creature’s heels—his hand clutched at her shoulder. The lady, unconscious that she was the destined victim, was only turned about in her chair with a curious face. It all passed in an instant—a very dramatic episode. The vicious arm lunged out—the pursuer struck up—there flashed an arc of light as the blade somersaulted in the shine of the candles, and there broke a shrill scream and a jarring flurry of chair-legs as the company scrambled to its feet. Then were to be seen Darda standing passively in the grasp of her captor, and the victim fallen into a faint against the shoulder of her neighbour, who looked down upon her with a face all quivering with fright and fury.
And: “Curse me!” cried Lord Dunlone; “why doesn’t somebody come and take her? I never was in such a nest of cursed brigands in my life before.”
CHAPTER L.
The hapless master of “Delsrop” paced his dining-hall in a rare conflict of emotions. The wine gleamed on the table; but none was there to call a toast in it. His hospitality was abused; his company retired; and he was audibly cursing that cantrip of Fortune that had endowed him with a wilderness and a party of lunatics and cut-throats to people it, and had made of it at the same time a perfect purgatory of misunderstanding.
“Now,” he groaned to himself, “if I am not in the mind to call in Jack Fern and his gang to resolve a problem that gets beyond me!”
All had disappeared from the room, and he was alone. He had himself, in a fury of passion, borne away Darda to the stables—whereto there was a covered passage leading from the north wing of the house—and had locked her in amongst the deer, as safe and appropriate to her animal outburst. Angela—more frightened than hurt by the little punctured wound on her fair white shoulder which the knife had made in its fall—had been supported to an upper room by her brother and Dunlone. Betty was fled, he knew not whither, and Luvaine gone to take his turn of guard in the chamber of the “Priest’s Hole,” which now, in the light of late discovery, was considered the nucleus of danger.
Dusk was creeping on when, in the midst of his irritable tramping, he turned to find that Dennis was come into the room.