"And it will have been through me—it will have been through me! Oh, in mercy let me make the signal! Say you will go to-night."
"I will go."
There followed a little pause of breathless silence between them. Then as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed with lugubrious reverberation through the old stone passages around them.
At first, terror-stricken, her tongue clave to her palate, her feet were rooted to the ground; then with a scream she flung herself upon him and would have dragged him towards the door.
"They have come—hide—hide!"
He threw up his head to listen, while he strove to disengage himself. The blood had leaped to his cheek, and fire to his eye. "And if it be Adrian?" he cried.
Another knock thundered through the still air.
"It is but one man," cried René from his tower down the stairs. "You may open, Moggie."
"No—no," screamed Molly beside herself, and tighter clasped her arms round Captain Jack's neck.
"Adrian, it is Adrian!" said he. "Hush, Madam, let me go! Would you make the breach between me and my friend irreparable?"