“Let us sit down for a minute and think,” said the girl, pointing to the moss-grown roots of the old tree.
CHAPTER XXXIII
BILLY CROOM
“But the game is not played out yet,” said Mr Fanshawe; “we have nearly twenty-four hours before us. I’ll hocus the horses, I’ll get Patsy to take the lynch-pins out of the brougham, I’ll do something—anything—before letting him win like that. The case is desperate. It will be two years before you are of age and your own mistress.”
“Two years, three months and three—no—four days,” said Miss Lestrange.
“He will take you away from here and bottle you up somewhere, or put you in Chancery or something—I know him! He will keep you so close I will never be able to see you or speak to you. He will intercept my letters—we will be able to make no plans. We will be separated two years certain—I may die, you may die—you may get to care for some one else. I have a conviction that if we don’t carry out our plan, and go away with one another day after to-morrow, something will divide us for ever.”
“Dicky!” said the girl.
“Yes?”
“You know what you said about doing something to the horses or the carriage.”
“Yes.”