Craven Black caught up the girl’s light figure, and bore her from the cabin, the men following. He strode up the steep hill, holding Neva fiercely to his breast, and now and then he looked down upon her still white face with an expression singularly made up of love and hatred.
Yes, although he had married Lady Wynde from motives of interest, and because, as he had said to himself, a half-loaf of bread was better than none at all, his old love for Neva was not dead in his guilty breast. It was a strange passion, growing hot and cool by turns, now verging toward hatred, and now reviving to its olden strength. As he gathered the girl in his arms, and went up the hill with her at long, fierce strides, he said to himself that there was no crime at which he would pause, no obstacle which he would not sweep from his path, if the heiress of Hawkhurst would only promise to marry him on the attainment of his freedom.
“Neva!” he whispered.
The young girl raised her eyes to his with such a look of loathing and detestation that his love for her changed suddenly again to hatred. He knew in that moment that the guilty scheme he had just conceived was only a vain fancy, and that Neva could never be induced under any circumstances to marry him.
“I’m tired, captain,” he said abruptly. “You can carry her.”
The captain took the helpless burden and went on, Black keeping at his side.
In this manner, taking turns in carrying the young captive, the party returned to the Wilderness.
The mist was still falling when they came upon the plateau, but Mrs. Black stood out upon the lawn, her head bare, her morning robe saturated with wet, and her face worn and haggard with anxiety. There were great dark circles under her hard black eyes, and her mouth was compressed, and there were deep lines about it that added ten years to her apparent age. What she had suffered that day from fear of exposure through her injured step-daughter, her face declared, but she had known less of remorse than of apprehension and terror.
Behind Octavia, upon the porch, and comfortably wrapped in a water-proof cloak, stood Mrs. Artress. Both had thus been watching nearly all the day for the return of the pursuers, and it was now three o’clock of the afternoon, and the dusk was rapidly falling.
“They’ve come! They’ve come!” cried Octavia Black hysterically. “They are alone—No; they have got the girl! We are safe—safe!”