As if she had not recognised his voice with just as much certainty as she had done her companion's!
CHAPTER XIX
[AN INTERLUDE]
With sensations which she would not have found it easy to describe, Miss Frances Vernon felt a great hand grip her by the shoulder with a degree of roughness to which she was unaccustomed, and heard a coarse voice exclaim:
"I arrest you! You're my prisoner?" The speaker seemed to be a little short of breath; she realised that he had been running towards her across the lawn; but shortness of breath did not prevent his tightening his grip upon her shoulder until it was all she could do to keep herself from crying out with pain. But she managed to keep still. It dawned on her that she had been mistaken for Dorothy; and that the longer the mistake continued the better start the girl would have. Her captor was joined by someone else--evidently his superior officer. "I've got her, sir--here she is."
The new-comer seemed also to be having some trouble with his breathing apparatus; words came from him in gasps.
"What's--your name--young woman?"
Frances hesitated; then, turning, as far as her captor would permit her to do, she looked at as much of her questioner's face as she could see in the darkness.
"What business is it of yours what my name is? How dare you ask me such a question?"
But the officer was not to be put off like that.