“What does that matter?” she said, gazing at Beaumagnan. “I hold him safely enough.”
“But you do not hold Godfrey d’Etigues; and perhaps at this very minute he is on the spot with his cousin, the two of them sent in advance by Beaumagnan to explore the spot and make preparations for carrying off the treasure. Do you understand the danger? Do you understand that the loss of a minute may mean the loss of the game?”
She held out fiercely, crying: “I win it if Clarice speaks.”
“She will not speak—for the excellent reason that she has told you all she knows,” he said in a tone that carried conviction.
“Be it so, but then do you speak yourself, since you have been so foolish as to make this disclosure. Why should I set her free? Why should I obey you? As long as Clarice is in the hands of Leonard, I have only to will to drag from you everything you know.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That danger is passed; that storm is at a distance. Perhaps, as a matter of fact, you have only to will; but equally as a matter of fact, you can no longer will that. You have no longer the strength to will it.”
And it was true; and he was certain of it. Hard, cruel, “infernal,” as Beaumagnan had said, but none the less a woman and subject to failure of nerve, she committed her evil deeds rather on impulse than by a deliberate effort of will—in an access of madness and hysteria, which was followed by a kind of lassitude, by enfeeblement as much moral as physical. Ralph was sure that at that very moment she was suffering from such a reaction.
“Come, Josephine: be consistent,” he said. “You have staked your life on this card, the conquest of boundless riches. Are you going to throw away the fruit of all your efforts when I offer you those riches?”
Her resistance was weakening. But she protested: “I don’t trust you.”
“That isn’t true. You know quite well that I keep my promises. If you hesitate—but you do not hesitate. In your heart of hearts, you have made your decision; and it is the right one.”