He smiled, for she was swaying, her lids half closed. By a supreme effort she conquered her terror and looked at him. The look was in his eyes still, intensified now.
"How dare you speak to me after what has happened! she said. If Colonel
Carvel were here, he would—kill you."
He flinched at the name and the word, involuntarily. He wiped his forehead, hot at the very thought.
"I want to know!" he exclaimed, in faint-hearted irony. Then, remembering his advantage, he stepped close to her.
"He is here," he said, intense now. "He is here, in that there room." He seized her wrists. Virginia struggled, and yet she refrained from crying out. "He never leaves this city without I choose. I can have him hung if I choose," he whispered, next to her.
"Oh!" she cried; "oh, if you choose!"
Still his body crept closer, and his face closer. And her strength was going.
"There's but one price to pay," he said hoarsely, "there's but one price to pay, and that's you—you. I cal'late you'll marry me now."
Delirious at the touch of her, he did not hear the door open. Her senses were strained for that very sound. She heard it close again, and a footstep across the room. She knew the step—she knew the voice, and her heart leaped at the sound of it in anger. An arm in a blue sleeve came between them, and Eliphalet Hopper staggered and fell across the books on the table, his hand to his face. Above him towered Stephen Brice. Towered was the impression that came to Virginia then, and so she thought of the scene ever afterward. Small bits, like points of tempered steel, glittered in Stephen's eyes, and his hands following up the mastery he had given them clutched Mr. Hopper's shoulders. Twice Stephen shook him so that his head beat upon the table.
"You—you beast!" he cried, but he kept his voice low. And then, as if he expected Hopper to reply: "Shall I kill you?"