“Now tell me your name, and how came the intimacy of which I complain,” said Mr Sterne.
“I—I knew the family; I knew Lucy—Miss Grey—before her father—and—pray, pray ask me no more,” gasped Agnes appealingly. “I will do all you wish, sir. Help me to get my child, and I will go anywhere you may tell me; but don’t ask me that, sir.”
“Nay,” said Mr Sterne, with beating heart, for he felt that her reply would drive away his last doubt, “tell me now; you may trust me.”
“Yes, yes,” sobbed Agnes; “I know, but I cannot.”
The step sounded very close now, while the light from the lamp in the alley was for a moment obscured.
“I will do all that you ask,” sobbed Agnes. “Tell me what else you wish, and I will be as obedient as a child, but—”
“Prove it, then, by telling me how began your intimacy with Miss—”
There was a wild scream from Agnes Hardon as she thrust the curate aside; but too late, for a heavy, dull blow from behind crushed through his hat, and stretched him upon the pavement, where, for an instant, a thousand lights seemed dancing before his eyes, and then all was blank.
It was no unusual sound that, a woman’s shriek, especially the half-drunken cry of some street wanderer; but one window was opened, and a head thrust out, whose owner muttered for a moment and then closed the sash, for though he had seen a woman struggling with a man, he did not hear the words that passed, nor could he see that the man was trying hard to extricate himself from the woman’s grasp; but there were other wakeful eyes upon the watch.