“But they won’t do you no harm, ma’am, nor the gent neither—though how you came——”
“Do him no harm—when they have been doing their best to cut him to pieces? No, go away. I’ll not move while there’s one of them about.”
Some vigorous speaking on Carthew’s part, and the armed men melted unwillingly away, only to form a fresh hostile circle at a rather greater distance.
“Now, ma’am, they’re well away from you, if you’ll let me help you up. Captain Lennox won’t thank you——”
“Captain Lennox! What in the world would I be doing with Captain Lennox?” with asperity. “Don’t you know Major Ambrose when you see him?” Eveleen sat up and put back her hair, but refused to rise.
Tom Carthew might have objected with justice that he had been quite unable to see Richard before, and could only see the back of his head now, but he was looking helplessly from him to Eveleen. “Is it a mistake, or have they played a trick on me?” he demanded slowly. “Were you in the boat that was to be captured by the Codgers, ma’am—off an island, nearer t’other side of the river than this one?”
“We were captured, indeed—by some horrid treachery that I’ve not been able to make out yet. Was it your doing, will you tell me? And how is it”—with sudden recollection—“that you wouldn’t be dead, as we heard you were?”
“We needn’t go into that, ma’am—though I’ve often wished since that I was. But that boat——”
But Eveleen would not suffer any evasion. “We heard you were killed because you refused to fire on us in the Agency—your own people. Was it true or was it not?”
“Not that I was killed,” sullenly.