“Have mercy upon me; let me depart, or I shall swoon,” she ejaculated, in a feeble voice. “Oh! in mercy let me go.”
“Your promise,” he cried. “Let me give you the best reason to fall in with my arrangements. The name of him you loved was Hugh Riversdale—”
She leaped up.
“If you would not have me fall dead at your feet, let me go!” she exclaimed, frantically.
“Not till you hear from me,” he answered scornfully, “that knowing the fellow to be a beggarly clerk to a merchant, I called at the warehouse to make inquiries respecting him, and in proof of the estimation in which he was held in his own province, was told abruptly that he was dead—had died on his voyage out to India, and was thrown into the sea.”
Helen uttered a faint scream, and fell back lifeless.
The firm grip with which Lester Vane yet held her prevented her receiving injury in her fall.
When she was lifeless upon the green sward, he released her hands, repenting, at the moment, his precipitation.
He had no time for more.
He was suddenly seized by the throat, and dragged from the shadow into the open space, where there was light enough for him to distinguish features he had seen once before.