“Oh, then I see that this will not do. You are desperate, you are dangerous, you must be restrained,” said Major Helmstedt, rising and approaching his daughter.
“Father, what mean you now? You would not—you, a gentleman, an officer, would not lay violent hands on your daughter?” she said, shrinking away in amazement.
“In an exigency of this kind my daughter leaves me no alternative.”
“No, no! You would not use force to hinder me in the discharge of a sacred duty?”
“Margaret, no more words. Come to your room,” he said, taking her by the arm, and with gentle force conducting her to the door of her own chamber, in which he locked her securely.
Knowing resistance to be both vain and unbecoming, Margaret had, for the time, quietly submitted. She remained sitting motionless in the chair in which he had placed her, until she heard his retreating footsteps pause at the door of his study, and heard him enter and lock the door behind him.
Then she arose and stepped lightly over the carpeted floor, and looked from the front window out upon the night.
A dark, brilliant starlight night, with a fresh wind that swayed the branches of the trees.
Almost omnipotent is the religious heart; willing to sink all things for the salvation of the beloved.
The means of escape, and of preventing the duel, were quickly devised by her suggestive mind. Her chamber was on the second floor front. A grape vine of nearly twenty years’ growth reached her window, and climbed up its side and over its top. The intertwined and knotted branches, thick as a man’s wrist, and strong as a cable, presented a means of descent safe and easy as that of a staircase. And once free of the house, the course of the brave girl was clear.