“I won’t listen to such a defamation of the character of my dearest friend!” she whispered.
He kissed her fingers.
“But it’s the truth,” he asserted. “I hope you’ll forgive me and forget it, Nadia.”
“Why, you dear fellow, you talk as if you had committed a crime!”
“I feel that way. If we get out of this scrape alive, Nadia, I’ll try to prove to you that I’m not such a fool as I seem. You see!”
“Oh, hush!”
“You see!” he repeated.
“But we may none of us escape. Isn’t it terrible! I don’t like Dick’s plan for Dunbar and I to leave first. I think we had better wait and all go together. If we——”
She stopped, checked by a dull, muffled, murmuring roar that seemed to come from the streets not far away. The sound made her tremble.
“The mob has not dispersed!” she whispered. “It has been driven away, but it is returning! I fear we’re lost!”