CHAPTER IX. Doctor Danton’s carriage dashed away like mad, and the man on the box smiled grimly to himself as he guided the spirited horses onward down the long, white country road which led to an adjacent town. “A bold stroke, and a sure one,” Gilbert Warrington muttered. “If ever the devil helped his own, he has extended the right hand of fellowship to me to-night. She is safe in my care now, and I imagine that I can find a way to make her hold her tongue. Otherwise, she will tell her pathetic, her strangely romantic story to the nearest magistrate, and my game will be up. As long as I can keep her out of the way, keep her safely concealed from the eyes of the world, I shall have everything in my own hands. She will keep silent—she will have to—and I shall control the fortune. With only that girl to manage, there will be little trouble, I think. If I could have had my own way with Rosamond”—he went on thoughtfully, after a brief pause, during which he turned the horses’ heads into a new road, and applied the whip-lash lightly to their backs as he did so—“I would have made her my wife, and then all would have gone finely. But she hates me so—the little spitfire—that she could not endure my[Pg 73] presence. Not that I mind her hatred so much, either; but it would have been sauce piquante to me; but I could not gain her consent. Neither persuasion, threats, nor intimidation had any effect upon her; she was firm, and not afraid of me. Because she was in her own house, surrounded by friends (old Danton would give his eyes for her); it will be quite different now, with her in my absolute power. Ah! my dear, you will live to regret the hour when you scorned Gil Warrington.” [Pg 73] On went the carriage as though pursued by demons—on, on! Rosamond Arleigh, nestling among the cushions inside, began to think that it was time that Yorke Towers was reached. Opening the carriage door softly, she called aloud: “Driver!” The carriage did not halt; its speed was unchecked. Once more she called loudly in accents of terror, a strange horror beginning to tug at her heart-strings. “Driver! Stop! Stop a moment!” There was danger that the sound of her voice in its wild appeal might reach the ears of a chance passer, although at this hour, in this lonely country place, there was little danger. But still she might contrive to make herself heard by somebody. The very thought drove the
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