[CHAPTER IX.]
JUST IN TIME.
Beatrix stood staring blankly into the old man's excited face, with a strange feeling of sickening terror creeping over her heart. Was he mad? In Heaven's name, what did he mean? Was she shut up alone in this dreary old house with a raving madman? She stood there, trembling like a leaf, quailing before the steady stare of his wild, dark eyes burning into hers with a look of awful meaning.
"Oh, Uncle Bernard!" she faltered at length, striving hard to steady her tremulous voice, "surely you do not mean that? You are only jesting, of course. You surely could not mean for me to do such a thing—such an unheard-of thing? Why, think of the suffering I would endure—the pain and torture, and don't ask me to do such a mad thing, Uncle Bernard! And—for what purpose?"
His bloodshot eyes gleamed with a curious light.
"For what purpose? That is for me to know, Miss Beatrix Dane. I have already told you that this is a test. A test of what, you will ask, with all a woman's curiosity. But that question I shall not now answer. Should the test fail, then I shall be at liberty to tell you all, and you will have cause to be grateful, Beatrix. But there is no other way to prove the truth only by this, which seems so absurd to you. You must try and be brave, and obey me, Beatrix. You must thrust your right hand into the flames; that was the advice of the physician whom I consulted. 'If you can induce the young lady to put her hand in the fire,' so Doctor De Trobriand informed me, 'you will soon know the worst. If the thing you suspect should prove to be true, then—' But there, Beatrix, I must not reveal to you the rest of the doctor's opinion. That is a professional secret. Do you still refuse?"
"I do."
Beatrix's voice was stern, and her eyes full of a resolute light. Surely the man before her was a lunatic, and she must not allow him to intimidate her.
"I do refuse—absolutely!" she repeated, bravely. "Your command is not reasonable, and I shall not obey it. You must be mad, Uncle Bernard, to expect obedience to such a command!"
"You refuse, eh?"