Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/222

 but I'll stake my soul that you do not overhear a word."

I had no sooner expelled him from the room with this peremptory mirth, than I whispered feverishly in his ear:

"For God's sake do not do it now! Go back to my room, and I will follow and talk the matter over."

Thereupon I boldly rejoined the Captain and the Corporal, and slapped the library door in the face of the prisoner standing on the mat. The suspicions I had aroused by a course so strange must be soothed at any cost. Unlimited lying came greatly to my aid. I ordered the puzzled Corporal to turn the key upon the lady.

"She is just burning with curiosity," I laughed; "but I'll take care that she shall not satisfy it."

'Twas a mercy that the Captain's leg was in such a posture, that his back was to the door, and though he must have heard sounds of a woman's entrance, and that I was in a flutter of one kind or another, and had been excited to strange steps, he could not possibly have seen Miss Prue, and happily his injury forbade him turning round to look. Again, the Corporal was of such a primitive intelligence that he never suspected anything at all. Finding the Captain as resolute as ever, I took an early chance to quit the arbitrary wretch, and sought the rebel.

His appearance in the library was simple to explain. He had got a hint of my predicament, and