“Yes, dear.” Jeremy was still trying to draw her away.
“And I got this—look!” Jeremy peered at something she held up to him, but could not make out what it was. She thrust it into his hand, and he felt a small round metal box, the size and shape of half an egg. “I took it once, months ago, from that silly girl, Mary. She was pretending to be in love, and she said that if ever her lover deserted her she’d kill herself. Then she boasted that she’d got poison so as to be ready—Rose told me. So I made her give it to me, and I never thought about it again till to-day.”
“Yes, dear,” Jeremy murmured soothingly, “but it’s all right now. You don’t need it. Shall we throw it away?”
“No, no!” she cried agitatedly, snatching the box back; then calmly again: “Don’t be angry with me, Jeremy. It’s stupid, but you don’t know how I wanted that box this afternoon while I was hiding in the garden, so as to be sure.... And I couldn’t get up the courage to go back and look for it. I must keep it for a little while now. I’ll throw it away myself in a little while.” She tucked the box into her dress and gave him her hand. Without another word they set off towards the Speaker and the horses.
CHAPTER XV
FLIGHT
1
THE old man had not moved from the spot or the attitude in which Jeremy had left him. He still stood by the horses, holding the bridles, his head fallen forward on his chest.
“Don’t say anything to him,” Jeremy whispered hurriedly to the Lady Eva. “He’s ... he’s strange.” She nodded in reply. Her father, however, took no notice of her, if he saw her, but only turned mutely to Jeremy as though awaiting orders. It then first occurred to Jeremy to ask himself what they ought to do next. The inhuman power which had sustained him so far and had given him supernatural gifts of foresight and decision, now without warning deserted him. He found himself again what he had been before, an honest, intelligent and courageous man, placed by fate in a situation which demanded much more of him than honesty, intelligence, or courage. He felt like the survivor of a midnight shipwreck who loses in a flurry of waves the plank to which he is clinging and is abandoned to the incalculable and hostile forces of darkness and the sea.
He turned to the girl and asked her advice; but she shook her head dumbly. She had followed him there as a child follows its guardian, without questioning him, accepting his wisdom and his will as though they had been the inalterable decrees of Providence. In despair he addressed the Speaker as he would have addressed him a week or even a day before, seeking to learn if there was any well-affected magnate in whose house they could find refuge.
A change became visible on the old man’s face. He seemed to be struggling to think and to speak, and in his eagerness he sawed the air with his disengaged hand. At last he ejaculated in a strange, hoarse voice, produced with effort, which jerked from fast to slow and from the lowest note to the highest, as though he had no control over it: