“Oh! you have heard them, then! what will become of us?”
Lewis took her trembling hand in his.
“Calm yourself,” he said in the same low tone; “I will defend you, and if needs be, die for you.”
His words, spoken slowly and earnestly, appeared to act like a charm upon her. She became at once composed, and looking up in his face with an expression of childlike trust, inquired—
“And what shall I do?”
“Go back to your apartment and pray for my success; God is merciful, and will not turn a deaf ear to such angel pleadings,” was the solemn reply.
Annie again gazed earnestly at him, and reading in the stern resolution of his features the imminence of their danger, was turning away with a sickening feeling of despair at her heart, when Lewis again addressed her.
“I am going to awaken the man-servant,” he said; “the butler is an accomplice of these scoundrels, and has admitted them. They cannot, however, molest you without ascending the stairs, and as they do that I shall encounter them; the result is in the hands of God.”
He was about to leave her, but there was a speechless misery in her face as she gazed upon him which he could not resist. In an instant he was by her side.
“Dear Annie,” he said, and his deep tones faltered from the intensity of his emotion—it was the first time he had ever called her by her Christian name—“Dear Annie, do not look at me thus sorrowfully; it is true we are in peril, but I have ere now braved greater danger than this successfully, and—should I fall, life has few charms for me—to die for you——!”