"That wretch!" and snatching the infant from his nurse, she folded him to her bosom and fled away, crying as she ran—"Come, my Lady, oh, come for God's sake! leave that monster: come, Miss Ross—run! fly! he will murder us all."
Wild and extraordinary as this panic seemed to Ellen, her feet involuntarily obeyed, and with the cross still in her hand, she suddenly fled from this poor sickly wretch, who, unable to follow, stood amazed at their apparently frantic demeanour.
Joanna and Griffiths ran after the Countess; though still no one knew the cause of this extraordinary alarm; and so eagerly did the affrighted Bayfield speed, that though encumbered with the child, and advanced as she was in years, they could not easily overtake her.
While they hastened on, each unable to account for the strange terror which had seized them all, they were met by St. Aubyn and Charles Ross, who, passing Bayfield at some little distance, were unobserved by her, and seeing Ellen and Joanna apparently terrified, ran by a shorter cut to meet them.
"What on earth has happened?" said St. Aubyn, seeing them pale and almost breathless. "Ellen! Joanna! what has happened? Has any one frightened you? Griffiths, what has alarmed them thus?"
"Indeed, my Lord," said Griffiths, "I am as ignorant as you are; the ladies were talking to the poor sick Turk on the shore, and Mrs. Bayfield on a sudden seized the child from his nurse, ran away, and called to us to follow, for we should be all murdered: Lady St. Aubyn and Joanna instantly obeyed, and I followed, but why, or what was the cause of the alarm, I am unable to imagine."
"I believe—I think," panted Ellen, "that Bayfield knew something of the man we were speaking to, for she trembled as she looked at him, and said he would murder us, or words to that effect."
"What is that in your hand, Ellen?" said St. Aubyn. "Heavenly powers! What is it?"
His limbs trembled, and he grew so pale, she thought he was fainting.
"It is a cross, my Lord," she replied, "a cross that the man—the Turk—offered to sell to me.—I forgot that I had it in my hand."