'Well, curse you,' the younger man answered, flaring up again, 'could I help it if my horse fell? Do you think I should be sitting here to be rough-ridden by you if it were not for this?' He raised his right arm, or rather his shoulder, with a stiff movement; they saw that the arm was bound to his side. 'But for that she would be in Bristol by now,' he continued disdainfully, 'and you might whistle for her. But, Lord, here is a pother about a college-wench!'
'College-wench, sir?' the lawyer cried scarcely controlling his indignation. 'She is Sir George Soane's cousin. I'd have you know that!'
'And my promised wife,' Sir George said, with grim-ness.
Dunborough cried out in his astonishment. 'It is a lie!' he said.
'As you please,' Sir George answered.
At that, a chill such as he had never known gripped Mr. Dunborough's heart. He had thought himself in an unpleasant fix before; and that to escape scot free he must eat humble pie with a bad grace. But on this a secret terror, such as sometimes takes possession of a bold man who finds himself helpless and in peril seized on him. Given arms and the chance to use them, he would have led the forlornest of hopes, charged a battery, or fired a magazine. But the species of danger in which he now found himself--with a gallows and a silk rope in prospect, his fate to be determined by the very scoundrels he had hired--shook even his obstinacy. He looked about him; Sir George's servant had come up and was waiting a little apart.
Mr. Dunborough found his lips dry, his throat husky. 'What do you want?' he muttered, his voice changed. 'I have told you all I know. Likely enough they have taken her back to get themselves out of the scrape.'
'They have not,' said the lawyer. 'We have come that way, and must have met them.'
'They may be in Chippenham?'
'They are not. We have inquired.'