"Go!" I cried. "Go and leave me, you villain!"
"If I do leave you," he said, fixing his eyes on me, "it will be, my friend--to death."
"Then so be it!" I answered wildly. "So be it! I will keep my honor."
"Your honor!" The mask dropped from his face, and he sneered as he rose from his seat. A darker scowl changed and disfigured his brow, as he lost hope of gaining me. "Your honor? Where will it be by to-night?" he hissed, his eyes glowering down at me. "Where a week hence, when you will be cast into a pit and forgotten? Your honor, fool? What is the honor of a dead man? Pah! But die, then, if you will have it so! Die, like the brainless brute you are! And rot, and be forgotten!" he concluded passionately.
They were terrible words; more terrible I know now than either he or I understood then. They so shook me that when he was gone I crouched trembling on my pallet, hiding my face in a fit of horror--taking no heed of my jailers or of appearances. "Die and be forgotten! Die and be forgotten!" The doom rang in my ears.
Something which seemed to me angelic roused me from this misery. It was the sound of a kindly, familiar voice speaking English. I looked up and found the Dutchman bending over me with a face of infinite distress. With him, but rather behind him, stood Van Tree, pale and vicious-eyed, tugging his scanty chin-beard and gazing about him like a dog seeking some one to fasten upon. "Poor lad! poor lad!" the old man said, his voice shaking as he looked at me.
I sprang to my feet, the irons rattling as I dashed my hand across my eyes.
"It is all right!" I said hurriedly. "I had a--but never mind that. It was like a dream. Only tell the Duchess to look to herself," I continued, still rather vehemently. "Clarence is here. He is in Santon. I have seen him."
"You have seen him?" both the Dutchmen cried at once.
"Ay!" I said, with a laugh that was three parts hysterical--indeed, I was still tingling all over with excitement. "He has been here to offer me my life if I would help him in his schemes. I told him he was the tempter, and defied him. And he--he said I should die and be forgotten!" I added, trembling, yet laughing wildly at the same time.