“I shall not tell you,” she repeated.
“You’re a—plucky piece,” he muttered between his teeth, and fixing his fierce eyes again upon her in the strange way she had noticed before.
They seemed to transfix her, and a shuddering sensation pervaded her frame whenever she met them.
“Do you mean to brave me and risk the consequences?” he demanded.
“If you ever gain that paper it will be through your own efforts alone. I shall never tell you where it is,” she replied, slowly and firmly.
He acted for a moment as if undecided what to do next. Then he took up the letter she had been writing Earle and read it through.
She could not help this, of course, but her cheeks burned and her eyes flashed indignantly as she thought of the tender little passages that she had thrown in now and then, and that had been intended for her lover’s eye alone.
She had told him a good deal of her adventure, and how that, as soon as she had copied it, she had hidden the precious original; but strangely enough she never mentioned even to him where, but said that no one but herself knew of its hiding-place, and to-morrow she intended taking it to Mr. Felton to see what he advised about it.
“Aha!” said the wretch, as he read this; “no one knows anything about the precious document but yourself?”
“No.”