“And if I do as you say—?”
“You are safe! You are free! I stake my life on it.”
“And you—you are married to that villain?”
“But I shall have saved you. Tell me your name, that I may say it to myself when I am alone.”
“My name is Anthony. But you must not marry that fellow.”
“You forgive me, Anthony? You don’t think too badly of me?”
“I say you must not marry that fellow.”
She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “Time presses,” she adjured him, “and I warn you there is no other way.”
For a moment he had a vision of his mother, sitting very upright, on a Sunday evening, reading Dr. Tillotson’s sermons in the best parlour at Salem; then he swung round on the girl and caught both her hands in his. “Yes, there is,” he cried, “if you are willing. Polixena, let the priest come!”
She shrank back from him, white and radiant. “Oh, hush, be silent!” she said.