She threw herself against the panelling of the wall in a frenzy of terror, and beat upon it fiercely, frantically. There was a door behind her, but instinct warned her that it did not lead whither she desired to go. It was through the panelling that those sinister words had reached her.
But it resisted her wild efforts. She beat in vain. "Oh, Jake!" she cried again, and broke into agonized sobbing. "Jake, where are you?"
And then she heard his voice again, short this time and commanding. "Let her out, my lord! The game is up."
"Trust a woman to give it away!" said Saltash, and laughed a cold, hard laugh.
The panelling against which she stood suddenly yielded, slid back. She found herself standing on the threshold of the music-room, close to one of the carved fireplaces. And there, face to face with her, one hand thrust deep into his breeches-pocket, stood her husband, stood Jake. All her life she was to remember the look he wore.
Saltash was nearer still, but she scarcely saw him. She went past him, sobbing, inarticulate, unnerved. She stretched out trembling, beseeching hands to the man in whose eyes she read the lust of murder. She cried aloud to him in her agony!
"Come away! Oh, come away! Be merciful this once--only this once! Jake! Jake!"
She reached him, she clung to him; she would have knelt to him. But he thrust his left arm around her, forcibly holding her up.
He did not speak to her, did not, she believed, so much as look at her. His eyes were fixed with a terrible intensity upon the man beyond her. His attitude was strained and unyielding. The untamed ferocity of the wilds was in every line of him, in every tense muscle. Ruthlessness, lawlessness, savagery unshackled, fiercely eager, beat in every pulse, every sinew of his frame. She felt as if she were holding back a furious animal from his prey, as if at any moment he would burst free, and rend and tear till the demon that possessed him was satisfied.
But she clung to him faster and faster, seeking to pinion the murderous right hand that was thrust so deeply away out of her reach. She heard another laugh from Saltash, but she did not dare to turn. And then came a sound like the click of a spring-trap.