Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/262

 "But the Captain is fool enough to trust me, madam," he repeated.

"Then you refuse to fly?" I demanded, trembling in my eagerness.

"I do," says he.

"Then I hope you'll hang," I cried; "yes, simpleton that you are, I hope you'll hang."

However, at the mention of his certain fate, I was no longer mistress of myself, for I sat down suddenly in a very unreasonable fashion, covered my eyes with my hands, and allowed my tears to break forth in the most uncontrollable flood I've ever shed. When I desisted somewhat from this, and next looked up, the prisoner was at my side, and bending over me with a tenderness that added to my woe. Hardly a minute had fled since last I had seen his face, yet in that little time it appeared to have aged by twenty years. Great as my own pains were, I knew them to be equalled by his own, for he was plainly suffering a very bitter agony.

"Madam," he said, with his native bluntness refined into a strange sweetness by his grief, "would to God I had never known you! You make the thought of death terrible hard to bear."

"Oh!" I sobbed, with a ridiculous riot in my breast, "I thought I was never in your style; I thought you never cared; I thought"

"You are a wonderful, brave woman," he says, in a whisper, "a wonderful brave woman."

One of his tears fell down upon my shoulder.