“Mr. Grant,” said the girl, with a gasp. “But don’t ask me anything. Send him away. They’ll kill him. Oh, you are hurting me!”
Flora Schuyler shook her. “How did he come there?”
“I took Miss Torrance’s letter, and wrote the rest of it. I didn’t know they meant to do him any harm, but they made me write. I had to—he said he would marry me.”
The maid writhed in an agony of fear, but she stood still shivering when Hetty turned towards her with a blanched face that emphasized the ominous glow in her dark eyes.
“You wicked woman!” she said. “How dare you tell me that?”
“I mean Mr. Clavering. Oh——!”
The maid stopped abruptly, for Flora Schuyler drove her towards the door. “Go and undo your work,” she said. “Slip down at the back of the bluff.”
“I daren’t—I tried,” and the girl quivered in Miss Schuyler’s grasp. “If I could have warned him I would not have told you; but Joe saw me, and I was afraid. I told him to come at nine.”
It was evident that she was capable of doing very little just then, and Flora Schuyler drew her out into the corridor.
“Go straight to your room and stay there,” she said, and closing the door, glanced at Hetty. “It is quite simple. This woman has taken your note-paper and written Larry. He is in the bluff now, and I think she is right. Your friends mean to make him prisoner or shoot him.”