“Who has none,” was the gloomy reply. “No,” Herriard continued, with a shake of the head; “there is no hope in that. I can only repeat that there is nothing tangible against Gastineau; only a suspicion, on which the authorities would hardly dare to arrest him. His supposititious death is no offence at law.”
“But, my dear Geoffrey, are you, then, to go forever in fear of your life? Do these threats and attempts constitute no offence?”
Herriard laughed hopelessly. “Who could prove them? Do you think that calculating mind has not foreseen and provided against every possible contingency? It would give a man of Gastineau’s resource little trouble to loose himself from any knots with which we might try to bind him. My story of his threats he would probably laugh out of court.”
“But his attack upon you in your chambers?”
“It would be uncorroborated. He would probably swear that I attacked him; and our former relations would give colour to the story he would concoct, while they would tend to the discredit of my evidence. No, dear one, I see no help or hope from an appeal to the law. Just think how improbable, how incredible my story would sound told in the dry atmosphere of a Law Court, and impugned by the cleverest brain in the profession.”
“Yes; I fear you are right,” Alexia said dejectedly.
“Even if I gained my point,” Herriard went on, “it would not mean effective protection against him. London is the best policed city in the world, but that does not prevent a man’s life being absolutely at the mercy of any other man’s determination to take it. And Gastineau’s purpose is, we know, above everything tenacious and relentless.”
“Geoffrey, my darling,” Alexia cried in her agitation, “what are we to do? Is there no hope? I would rather kill this fiend with my own hand than that he should take you from me.”
“He has not taken me yet, and I mean to make a fight for it,” Herriard assured her, assuming a confidence he did not feel. He knew his enemy’s untiring vindictiveness and resource too well.
For a long while they talked over chances and expedients for escaping from the net, spun by that busy brain, that seemed to have enmeshed them. The present moment was theirs, with its mockery of freedom, and it seemed monstrous to accept the future with blank despair. In the end, after many a futile struggle against the narrowing circle of bands that was drawn round them, after many a suggestion rejected in its very conception, a course was decided upon. It was that they should be married at once, with the closest secrecy that might hope to elude even Gastineau’s vigilance, and that they should leave England, as already planned, for a long sojourn on Count von Rohnburg’s Austrian estate. Certainly it seemed but a poor method of securing safety;—was there a corner on the globe where a man might hope to hide from that inexorable, unswerving pursuit?—still there was the chance, the only one, of snatching a fearful, short-lived joy in defiance of the incarnate malignity which forbade it.