"You cat who did my bidding—you and your villainous son—how dare you threaten me? One word from me and you both would swing from a scaffold!" he hissed furiously. "Hold your cursed tongue, or beware of my vengeance!" and with an oath he left the house and took his way toward Gray Gables.
Meg crouched like one dazed in a chair where her assailant had flung her, but Jack Dineheart did not go in to see if she were dead or alive. He followed the miser almost to the gate of Gray Gables with a stealthy, sullen stride, then, suddenly, flung himself on him with resistless fury, and bore him down to the ground.
"Oh, you wretch, you devil, to have married her, the girl you promised in her bonny childhood should be mine, my wife! Oh, you fiend, to take her from me! But I will save poor Nita and avenge myself. Here at the gates of fancied bliss, you die."
A keen blade flashed in the air, then sunk in the man's breast.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
THE TENTH OF JUNE.
It was true, as the old miser had told Meg Dineheart, Nita had been saved from death by the skilful efforts of a London physician, and in the stupid, weakened state induced by the drug she had taken, and the measures used to counteract its effects, she was like wax in Mrs. Courtney's hands, so that she was brought home with scarcely a protest.