At once she knew that she was in the presence of her husband, but so dazzled was she that she could not discern him.
His fingers closed on her arm, as though each were an iron screw.
"So!" said he, in a low tone, his voice quivering with rage, "like
Karon Wyeth, you ask the Devil to break my neck."
"No," gasped Mehetabel.
"Yes, Matabel. I heard you. 'Save me from him. Take him away.'"
"No—no—Jonas."
She could not speak more in her alarm and confusion.
"Take him away. Snap his spine—send a bullet through his skull; cast him into Pug's mere and drown him; do what you will, only rid me of Bideabout Kink, whom I swore to love, honor, and to obey."
He spoke with bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated, with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas entertained some ancestral superstitions—and belief in the efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's Stone was one.
"No, Jonas, no. I did not ask it."