“You locked the door. Yes! but she has a second key. And even if she had not, there is another entrance from that closet. You do not know this house: you have been here two weeks; I spent two years of my life, as a girl, in this room.”
An indescribable sensation came over him; he remembered how he had felt when he first occupied it; this was followed by a keen sense of shame on reflecting that he had been, ever since, but a helpless puppet in the power of his enemies, and that she could have escaped if she would, even now.
“Perhaps,” he said grimly, “you have already arranged your plans?”
She looked at him with a singular reproachfulness even in her submission.
“I have only told her to be ready to change clothes with me and help me color my face and hands at the time appointed. I have left the rest to you.”
“Then this is my plan. I have changed only a detail. You and she must both leave this house at the same time, by different exits, but one of them must be private—and unknown to my men. Do you know of such a one?”
“Yes,” she said, “in the rear of the negro quarters.”
“Good,” he replied, “that will be your way out. She will leave here, publicly, through the parade, armed with a pass from me. She will be overhauled and challenged by the first sentry near the guardhouse, below the wall. She will be subjected to some delay and scrutiny, which she will, however, be able to pass better than you would. This will create the momentary diversion that we require. In the mean time, you will have left the house by the rear, and you will then keep in the shadow of the hedge until you can drop down along the Run, where it empties into the swamp. That,” he continued, fixing his keen eyes upon her, “is the one weak point in the position of this place that is neither overlooked nor defended. But perhaps,” he added again grimly, “you already know it.”
“It is the marsh where the flowers grow, near the path where you met Miss Faulkner. I had crossed the marsh to give her a letter,” she said slowly.
A bitter smile came over Brant's face, but passed as quickly.