A fair start was all she asked for, yet it would be as well to have him handicapped, and she glanced over her shoulder. He was in a distant alcove now, examining the contents of a cabinet, and—let her rejoice, therefore—he was sitting down; and a whole drawer full of coins reposed on his knees.
She would make a wild dash for liberty, but first she must deceive him, and, rising languidly, she drawled, “I will walk outside a minute. I am stifled here.”
He looked up, hastily and suspiciously, but her movements were deliberation itself, as she stepped through the open French window and out on the gravel walk.
“I will accompany you,” he ejaculated, but by the time he reached the window she had disappeared.
He would never catch up to her now, not if he ran till doomsday; and she shut her ears to the parental cry to tarry, and tore up the avenue until everything, like herself, seemed to be on the wing, and running for dear life. The trees rushed by her with a velocity as pronounced as if some one had broken them off from their roots and set them spinning gaily through space for all time to come. The flower beds were galloping hotly after the trees. The tall, white lily buds, asleep in the twilight a minute ago, were now wide-awake, and tremulous, nodding tops proclaimed their perturbation of spirit, lest they should come to harm in this distracted race. And two little fat, white bodies of statues gleamed out of the darkness,—Cupids, hugging their bows and quivers. An instant, and they had vanished, followed by Juno, stately Juno, her sceptre tucked under her arm, her long garments floating out behind her as she swept by in a neck and neck race with the short-skirted goddess of hunting.
The gates at last—and Nina thoughtfully flung them open for her pursuer. He would never catch her now, never, never.
CHAPTER XVII.
“MUCH HAVE I BORNE SINCE DAWN OF MORN.”
To sit in a tender with her feet on a bag of coal had never up to this been Nina’s idea of paradise. But now she changed her mind in the speediest manner possible.