"Is this a time for jesting?" exclaimed the girl, impatiently.
"He has been treating me to Gargantuan discourse, Jacqueline," said the fool, humbly. "I was but answering him in kind."
"And by delay increasing our danger!"
"Our danger!" He started.
Since she had first broached the subject of escape but one sweet and all-absorbing idea had possessed him—retaliation. Liberty was the means to that end, and every other thought and consideration had given way to this desire. He had fallen asleep with the free baron's dark features imaged on his fevered brain; when he had awakened the morbid fantasy had not left him. But now, at her words, in her presence, a new light was suddenly shed upon the enterprise, and he paused abruptly, even as he turned to leave the cell. With growing wonder she watched his altered features.
"Well," she exclaimed, impatiently, "why do you stand there?"
"Should I escape, you, Jacqueline, would remain to bear the brunt," he said, reflectively. "The jailer, when he awakes, will tell the story: who brought the wine; who succored the prisoner. To go, but one course is open." And he glanced down upon the prostrate man. "To silence him forever!"
She started and half-shrank from him. "Could you do it?"
He shook his head. "In fair contest, I would have slain him. But now—it is not he, but I, who am helpless. And yet what is such a sot's life worth? Nothing. Everything. Farewell, sweet jestress; I must trust to other means, and—thank you."
The outstretched hand she seemed not to see, but tapped the floor of the cell yet more impatiently with her foot, as was her fashion when angered. Here was the prison door open, and the captive enamored of confinement; at the culminating point conjuring reasons why he should not flee. To have gone thus far; to have eliminated the jailer, and then to draw back, with the keys in his hand—truly no scene in a comedy could be more extravagant. The girl laughed nervously.