But Antonia more than ever distrusted the Count, et dona ferentes. She disliked his eye, his wily words, the appearance of his swarthy crew, the evidently sea-fitted appearance of the yacht. She felt more than ever convinced that he had matured a deliberate plot to carry off an unsuspecting girl.
Such in truth was the unpardonable sin with which the Herr von Schätterheims had resolved to conclude his Australian career. Unable to meet the many pressing claims upon his finances, the holders of which, he had reason to know, were meditating an advance in line; having failed in the daring speculations in which, by means of humble foreign agents, he had invested the small capital with which he had arrived, and the incredibly large loans which his assurance and reputation for wealth had enabled him to procure,—he had conceived the desperate plan which Antonia’s quick intuition had discovered. He had determined, by force or fraud, to carry off Harriet Folleton, trusting that the irrevocable coup once made, time and other considerations would tend to the ultimate wresting of her immense fortune from her father’s hands.
Hunted by his creditors and threatened with imprisonment, the Count was now desperate. In such a position he had, more than once during his career, showed no disposition to stick at trifles. His yacht lay within hail—a seabird with her great wings plumed for instant flight, a Norway falcon looking on ocean from a low-placed rocky ridge. His crew of mixed nationality, who had followed him through many a clime, were lawless and devoted. The hour had come when Albert von Schätterheims would stand forth with front unveiled, and show these simple dwellers by the shore of the southern main what manner of man they had dared to drive to bay.
Therefore, when Antonia Frankston stepped forward, and with head erect and flashing eye interposed between the Count and his sacrifice, she confronted a different man from the silky, graceful serviteur des dames with whom she had often wished, for some instinctive reason, to quarrel.
‘I cannot go with you now, nor shall Miss Folleton, Count Schätterheims; it would not be right, in my father’s absence. Permit us to return to the house.’
‘Beholt me desoladed if Miss Frankstein will not honour my poor boad,’ said the Count, as he barred the progress of the two young ladies on the somewhat narrow green-walled alley which led to the house; ‘but’—fixing his eye steadily upon Harriet Folleton—‘I go not forth alone; Miss Harriet Folledon, you bromised me. I haf your vord. You vill come with me now; is it not so, belofet one? Ja! you vill follow de fortunes of Albert von Schätterheims, for efer.’
He strode forward a pace, and seizing the wrist of the frightened girl, spoke rapidly in Spanish, while two of his sailors ran up from the boat, to whom he committed the half-insensible form of the fainting girl.
Antonia Frankston did not faint or swoon. With sudden movement she confronted the Count, with so fierce an air and so unblenching a brow that he involuntarily stepped back a pace, and made as though to protect himself from the onset of a foe.
‘Coward and robber that you are, release her this instant,’ she cried.
The Count smiled sardonically. ‘You will parton me, mademoiselle, if I redurn you with my complimend for your goot opinion. My engachemends is more pressing, as you gan pelief.’