“For a man who can’t abide the sex, this is a predicament,” muttered the patroon’s jackal, as the coach in which he found himself sped rapidly along the highway. “Here am I as much an abductor as my lord who whipped his lady from England to the colonies!” Gloomily regarding a motionless figure on the seat opposite, and a face like ivory against the dark cushions. “Curse the story; telling it led to this! How white she is; like driven snow; almost as if––”
And Scroggs, whose countenance lost a shade of its natural flush, going from flame-color to salmon hue, bent with sudden apprehension over a small hand which hung from the seat.
“No; it’s only a swoon,” he continued, relieved, feeling her wrist with his knobby fingers. “How she struggled! If it hadn’t been for smothering her with the cloak––but the job’s done and that’s the end of it.”
Settling back in his seat he watched her discontentedly, alternately protesting against the adventure, and consoling himself weakly with the remembrance of the 145 retainer; weighing the risks, and the patroon’s ability to gloss over the matter; now finding the former unduly obtrusive, again comforted with the assurance of the power pre-empted by the land barons. Moreover, the task was half-accomplished, and it would be idle to recede now.
“Why couldn’t the patroon have remained content with his bottle?” he grumbled. “But his mind must needs run to this frivolous and irrational proceeding! There’s something reasonable in pilfering a purse, but carrying off a woman––Yet she’s a handsome baggage.”
Over the half-recumbent figure swept his glance, pausing as he surveyed her face, across which flowed a tress of hair loosened in the struggle. Save for the unusual pallor of her cheek, she might have been sleeping, but as he watched her the lashes slowly lifted, and he sullenly nerved himself for the encounter. At the aspect of those bead-like eyes, resolute although ill at ease, like a snake striving to charm an adversary, a tremor of half-recollection shone in her gaze and the color flooded her face. Mechanically, sweeping back the straggling lock of hair, she raised herself without removing her eyes. He who had expected a tempest of tears shifted uneasily, even irritably, from that steady stare, until, finding the silence intolerable, he burst out:
“Well, ma’am, am I a bugbear?”
In her dazed condition she probably did not hear his words; or, if she did, set no meaning to them, 146 Her glance, however, strayed to the narrow window, and then wandered back to the well-worn interior of the coach. Suddenly, as the startling realization of her position came to her, she uttered a loud cry, sprang toward the door, and, with nervous fingers, strove to open it. The man’s face became more rubicund as he placed a detaining hand on her shoulder, and roughly thrust her toward the seat.
“Make the best of it!” he exclaimed peremptorily. “You’d better, for I’m not to be trifled with.”
Recoiling from his touch, she held herself aloof with such aversion, a sneer crossed his face, and he observed glumly: