“What threat?”
“Ah, no. I—I’m mad, Wilfrid. I—I don’t know what I’m saying!” she cried, pushing her hair from her brow with both her hands and pacing up and down the room. “But you will help me—won’t you?” she implored, halting before me and looking me straight in the face.
“Help you—of course,” I said. “But I confess I can’t understand. This man only proposed marriage to you a fortnight ago.”
“I know. I know. And I refused him. Ah! Wilfrid. I would rather kill myself than marry that man!”
“Then you know something concerning him that is not in his favour?”
“I know a great deal. I often wonder why Jack and he are such intimate friends.”
“He’s rich, you said, and Lady Scarcliff approved of him.”
“That is so,” she answered thoughtfully. “But the mater is ignorant of it all. Ah! if I only dare tell you. It would astound and stagger you.”
“He is in search of you, that’s very clear,” I said, hoping to induce her to tell me something further.
“But he must not find me,” she declared. “The day he discovers me I shall take my life,” she added in a hard, desperate voice.