“Don't come near me!” cried Betty. Her eyes blazed, and she looked at him with' loathing.
“You'll learn to be kinder,” he exulted. “You wouldn't see me at Belle Plain; what was left for me but to have you brought here?” While Murrell was speaking, the signal that had told of his own presence on the opposite shore of the bayou was heard again. This served to arrest his attention. A look of uncertainty passed over his face, then he made an impatient gesture as if he dismissed some thought that had forced itself upon him, and turned to Betty.
“You don't ask what my purpose is where you are concerned; have you no curiosity on that score?” She endeavored to meet his glance with a glance as resolute, then her eyes sought the boy's upturned face. “I am going to send you down river, Betty. Later I shall join you in New Orleans, and when I leave the country you shall go with me—”
“Never!” gasped Betty.
“As my wife, or however you choose to call it. I'll teach you what a man's love is like,” he boasted, and extended his hand. Betty shrank from him, and his hand fell at his side. He looked at her steadily out of his deep-sunk eyes in which blazed the fires of his passion, and as he looked, her face paled and flushed by turns. “You may learn to be kind to me, Betty,” he said. “You may find it will be worth your while.” Betty made no answer, she only gathered Hannibal closer to her side. “Why not accept what I have to offer, Betty?” again he went nearer her, and again she shrank from him, but the madness of his mood was in the ascendant. He seized her and drew her to him. She struggled to free herself, but his fingers tightened about hers.
“Let me go!” she panted. He laughed his cool laugh of triumph.
“Let you go—ask me anything but that, Betty! Have you no reward for patience such as mine? A whole summer has passed since I saw you first—”
There was the noisy shuffling of feet on the stairs, and releasing Betty, Murrell swung about on his heel and faced the door. It was pushed open an inch at a time by a not too confident hand and Mr. Slosson thus guardedly presented himself to the eye of his chief, whom he beckoned from the room.
“Well?” said Murrell, when they stood together on the landing.
“Just come across to the keel boat!” and Slosson led the way down the stairs and from the house.