"Murderer, forsooth! Is that what you call legal justice?"
"It would not be legal justice! Doctor Wiseman, I tell you, if you say Archie Rivers killed Danvers, you lie! Yes, meanest of vile wretches, I tell you, you lie!"
He leaped to his feet, glaring with rage, as though he would spring upon her, and rend her limb from limb. Before him she stood, her little form drawn up to its full height, defiant and daring—her dark face glaring with scorn and hatred. For a moment they stood thus—he quivering with impotent rage—she, proud, defying, and fearless. Then, sinking into his seat, he said, with stern calmness:
"No—I will restrain myself; but, daring girl, listen to me. As sure as yonder heaven is above us, if you refuse, so surely shall Squire Erliston and all belonging to him be turned from their home—to die, if they will; and Archibald Rivers shall perish by the hand of the hangman, scorned and hated by all, and knowing that you, for whom he would have given his life, have brought him to the scaffold. Gipsy Gower, his blood will cry for vengeance from the earth against you!"
He ceased. There was a wild, thrilling, intense solemnity in his tone, that made the blood curdle. One look at his fiendish face would have made you think Satan himself was before you.
And Gipsy! She had dropped, as if suddenly stricken by an unseen hand, to the floor; her face changed to the ghastly hue of death, the light dying out in her eyes: her very life seemed passing away from the blue, quivering lips, from which no sound came; a thousand ages of suffering seemed concentrated in that one single moment of intense anguish.
But no spark of pity entered the heart that exulted in her agony. No; a demoniacal joy flashed from his snake-like eyes as he beheld that free, wild, untamed spirit broken at last, and lying in anguish at his feet.
"This struggle is the last. Now she will yield," was his thought, as he watched her.
"Gipsy!" he called.
She writhed at the sound of his voice.