Then my love—oh, may I not call her so now?—looked up at me sorrowfully over the brink of her short ecstasy.
“Dear Renny,” she said, “how can it ever be as you say? Rest can never come to us while he lives.”
“I have sworn, Zyp. I am confident and strong to grapple with this tragic Furioso. If he persists after one more warning we’ll set the law on him for a wandering lunatic.”
“That I believe he is—oh!” she closed her eyes as if in an ineffable dream of peace and security.
“The question is, what are you to do in the meantime?”
“That’s soon settled. We came over Micheldever, only a few miles away. We’ll go back there and hire a single room in the village—I saw one to let that would suit us—and wait till you send for us.”
“Very well. And what do you say to taking little Zyp back by yourself and leaving Jason here under my wing?”
“If you think it best.”
“I must make certain arrangements with him. Yes, I think that will be best.” I spoke cheerfully and buoyantly, anxious to quicken and sustain her new-born hope. Uneasy forebodings, nevertheless, drove me to make the proposition. I could not free my mind of the thought that Duke yet hung secretly about the place, induced to wait and watch on that sure instinct that had never yet in the long run failed to interpret to him the movements of his victims.
Therefore I felt it safer to keep my brother for the present under friendly lock and key rather than risk a further exposing of him to the malignant observation of his enemy.