“How do you know it is a copy?” she asked.
She had written that also with a pencil, as she could write more rapidly, and she had thought perhaps he would think it was the one she had written in John Loker’s house.
“Because I saw John Loker sign the other,” he said, with a malignant scowl, adding: “Now, will you hand the other over to me?”
“No, sir, I will not,” was the firm reply.
He seemed staggered for a moment at this.
“You won’t?” he repeated, at length, with an oath, and fixing his eyes upon her in a way that made her catch her breath and feel as if her strength was forsaking her.
“Do you know,” he added, “that you are in the power of a desperate man?”
“Yes, I suppose so; but that paper is of more importance to me than any other possession in the world.”
“Ah, ha! is that the way the wind blows? He’s a lover, eh?” laughed the villain, coarsely, and with a leer that made the blood boil in the young girl’s veins and glow hotly in her cheeks. “Allow me to ask,” he continued, with a sinister gleam in his eye, “if it is more precious to you than your—life?”
She shrank from him in sudden terror at the question, but, after a moment’s thought, she said: