“Let me pass! Stand aside!”
“Not so fast, Miss Wynde,” said Craven Black mockingly. “This lady, my wife, is your personal guardian, and she has the authority to control your movements—”
The girl’s passionate eyes flashed stormily at her enemies.
“Let me pass I say!” she cried, in a low, suppressed voice. “Attempt to detain me here, and I will arouse the household!”
“Do so,” said Craven Black, tauntingly. “The two stolid women in the kitchen cannot hear you; and if they could, they have been prepared for your outcries, and will not heed them. The sailors are on the yacht, in the loch below. You are out of the world up in this eagle’s eyrie, and you may beat your wings against the bars of your cage till you drop dead, my pretty bird, but no one will heed your flutterings. Call, if you will. Try the effect of a shriek!”
He took a step nearer to Neva, who retreated before him, shrinking from his touch. He went after her into the room, his companions following. Celeste closed the door, and placed herself against it.
“Sit down, Neva,” said Octavia Black, with a mocking intonation. “Lay aside your hat and sacque. Don’t abandon us upon the very evening of our arrival in our new residence.”
Neva made no answer, but Octavia shrank before the stern accusing of the girl’s gloomy, passionate eyes.
“As your guardian,” said Mrs. Black, recovering her self-possession, which had been momentarily shaken, “I desire to ask you where you were about to go when we intercepted you?”
“I might refuse to answer, madam,” replied Neva, “but you know as well as I do that I was about to start for Inverness on foot, and that I intended to go back to Hawkhurst and to my friends. Unfortunately, Mrs. Black, you are my personal guardian; but Sir John Freise and my other guardians, are desirous that I should choose another in your stead, and I shall now do so. Your character, madam, is at last revealed to me in all its moral hideousness. My recent vague suspicions of you have become certainties. Mr. Atkins was right in his distrust of you. But, madam, because my dead father loved and trusted you to the last hour of his life, because you have borne his honored name, I will spare you from blame and obloquy, and screen your ill-doings and ill-treatment of me even from my guardians. I will agree to thus screen you if you will stand aside and let me go forth now, at this moment.”