"You were wrong to leave us! You got into trouble immediately! You would have been in worse by this time, if we had not rescued you! Don't you know, when the laws are down on you, your only safety is with the outlaws?" inquired Gentiliska, as soon as she found herself alone with her guest.
"I don't know. I don't care. It is all one to me now. I only wish to die. If it were not a sin, I would die by suicide," answered Sybil with the dreary calmness of despair.
"'Die by suicide!' Die by a fiddlestick's end! You to talk so! And you not twenty years old yet! Bosh! cut the law that persecutes you and come with us merry outlaws who protect you. And whatever you do, don't run away from us again! You got us into awful trouble and danger and loss when you ran away the last time; did you know it?"
"No," sighed Sybil, wearily.
"Well, then, you did; and I'll tell you how it all happened: the secret of your abode at Pendleton Park was known to too many people. It couldn't possibly be kept forever by all. It is a wonder that it was kept so long, by any. They kept it only until they thought you were safe from pursuit and arrest. Then some of Captain Pendleton's people—it is not known whom—let it leak out until it got to the ears of the authorities, who set inquiries on foot; and then the whole thing was discovered, and as usual misinterpreted and misrepresented. You got the credit of voluntarily consorting with us, and of purposely blowing up the old Haunted Chapel. And the new warrants that were issued for your arrest charged you with that crime also."
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Sybil, forgetting all her indifference; "what will they not heap upon my head next? I will not rest under this imputation! I will not."
"Neither would I, if I were you—that is, if I could help it," said the girl, sarcastically.
But Sybil sat with her thin hands clasped tightly together, her deathly white face rigid as marble, and her large, dilated eyes staring into the fire heedless of the strange girl's irony.
"But now I must tell you how all this hurt us. In the first place, when your flight from the cavern was discovered, we felt sorry only on your account, because you ran into imminent danger of arrest. We had no idea then that your arrest would lead to the discovery of our retreat; but it did. When our detectives brought in the news of the warrants that were out against you, they also warned us that the authorities had the clue to our caverns, and that there was no time to be lost in making our escape."
With her hands still closely clasped together, with her pallid features still set as in death, and with her staring eyes still fixed upon the fire, Sybil sat, heedless of all that she heard.