Marion watched her for a moment in sympathetic silence. The woman’s agony was so genuine that it could not be mistaken.
“Oh, I shall despise myself utterly if I do not save her!” she muttered, “for the others it did not matter, but this poor child is innocent!”
Marion sprang to her side as she comprehended her meaning.
“You surely do not mean that he would harm me!” she whispered sharply. “Never! Never! Miss Gray, the thing is outrageous! Come! Let us leave this place at once,” she urged. “Surely you can get a position elsewhere! You need not work for such a monster!”
The woman hesitated a moment and Marion doubled her entreaties.
“Come, Miss Gray, put your hat on and we will leave this place at once! We will go somewhere, anywhere, so that we escape from that creature!”
“If he finds me I am lost!” muttered the woman slowly, then she raised her head defiantly, as she added, “but I will risk it!”
“But surely he is not your jailer,” cried Marion in surprise.
“He is worse than that,” was the woman’s answer. “He has wrecked my life, and made me his tool, but it shall end to-night, yes, by your purity, I swear it!”
There was a sudden fierceness in her speech that startled Marion. She resembled nothing so much as a creature at bay, a poor, wounded creature who had turned upon her persecutors and was thirsting for vengeance.