"And you are sorry, pretty Mollie? Why, that's odd, too! He was a rejected lover, was he not?"
"Let me out!" exclaimed the girl, frantically—"let me go! I thought you were Hugh Ingelow, or I never would have come! Let me out! Let me out!"
She made a rush at the door, with a shrill cry of affright. A sudden panic had seized her—a horrible dread of the man beside her—a stunning sense that it was not the man she loved.
Again that strident laugh—mocking, sardonic, triumphant—rang through the carriage. Her arms were caught and held as in a vise.
"Not so fast, my fair one; there is no escape: I can't live without you, and I see no reason why a man should live without his wife. You appointed this meeting yourself, and I'm excessively obliged to you. I am taking you to the sea-side to spend the honey-moon. Don't struggle so—we'll return to New York by and by. As for Hugh Ingelow, you mustn't think of him now; it isn't proper in a respectable married woman to know there is another man in the scheme of the universe except her husband. Mollie! Mollie! if you scream in that manner you'll compel me to resort to chloroform—a vulgar alternative, my dearest."
But Mollie struggled like a mad thing, and screamed—wild, shrill, womanly shrieks that rang out even above the rattle and roll of the carriage wheels.
The man, with an oath, placed his hand tightly over her mouth. They were going at a frightful pace, and already the city, with its lights and passengers, was left far behind. They were flying over a dark, wet road, and the wind roared through distant trees, and the rain fell down like a second deluge.
"Let me go—let me go!" Mollie strove madly to cry, but the tightening grasp of that large hand suffocated her.
The carriage seemed suddenly to reel, a thousand lights flashed before her eyes, a roar like the roar of many waters surged in her ears, a deathly sickness and coldness crept over her, and with a gasping sob she slipped back, fainting away for the first time in her life.