Whatever her feelings were, she repressed them and kept silence.
“One word,” he pleaded more vehemently as he thought her yielding, “one little word, promising to be my wife, and this awful danger shall pass from you. I swear it! Yes; if I have to shoot that mad fellow yonder with my own hand. I have power here and men who live but to do my will, men who would not hesitate at the risk of their lives to sweep danger and fear from the path of their queen and mistress. My wife! Philippa, you cannot refuse. Give me but hope, and you shall have an earnest that I am promising no more than I can accomplish. That man, who in his mad revenge seeks your life, shall never trouble you again. Only tell me I may hope.”
But she shook her head. “I cannot,” she replied. “And were it possible for me to love you, do you think I could consent to the death of the man who saved my life?”
“In order to reserve you for a worse fate,” he sneered.
“That could hardly be,” she rejoined, “unless it were to be the wife of a man I could not love.”
Zarka’s face was dark now. “You can scarcely expect him to ward off this danger in order that you may marry a rival. A rival! Bah! I make no rival of this flirting Lieutenant. Only—I tell you that you shall not marry him.”
Before Philippa could utter the indignant words that rose to her lips there was a sound of an approaching presence. Owing to the peculiar deadening effect of the wood, the steps were only heard just as three men emerged into the path where Zarka and Philippa stood. Both had looked round with a start. The Count smiled, and Philippa flushed with vexation as she recognized the three. They were Von Tressen, Galabin and D’Alquen.
CHAPTER XIX
THE COUNT’S GAME
That afternoon, Abele D’Alquen, prowling about the forest in his fiercely watchful mood, was startled and brought up suddenly by the report of a gun close behind him, and the sharp whizz of a bullet so near as to touch his sleeve. He turned with a loud exclamation of rage, and levelled his gun at the direction whence the shot must have come. His cry was returned by another of “Hold! Do not shoot!” then there was a rustling in the undergrowth, and next moment a man appeared, no less a person than Count Zarka. Count Zarka, with hand extended warningly, eyebrows elevated, and a grin of concern and apology.
“A million pardons, mein Herr!” he cried, coming eagerly forward. “I am too stupid. Heaven be thanked that I missed you. I deserve for my carelessness never to touch a gun again. But I have been watching for a boar that has its lair hereabouts, and I had no idea that any human being but myself was within a league of the place.”