‘Don’t be angry with me,’ says she imploringly.
‘Angry with you!’ says he impatiently. ‘There is only one to be angry with, and that is that devil. Where does he live?’
She gives him the road, and the number of the house where she had lived with the Moores—a road of small houses, chiefly occupied by artisans and clerks; a road not very far from the Zoological Gardens.
‘But what are you going to do?’ asks she nervously. ‘You will not tell him I am here?’
‘Of course not. But it is quite necessary that a fellow like that should feel there is a law in the land.’
‘But if you say anything about me,’ says she in a tone now thoroughly frightened, ‘he will search me out, no matter in what corner of the earth I may be.’
‘I don’t think so, once I have spoken to him,’ says the barrister grimly.
‘You mean’—she looks at him timidly—‘you think that if—’ She breaks off again. ‘He told me that his wife, who he said was my aunt, had made him guardian over me, and that he would be my master for ever.’
‘Even supposing all that were true, and Mrs. Moore were your aunt—which I doubt—and had left her husband guardian over you, still, there are limits to the powers of guardians.’
‘Then if you see him, you think’—with trembling anxiety—‘you can tell him that he has no hold over me?’