Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/179

 land where you have friends,—friends who never need suspect who and what you are. Do you know that I could imprison you for your whole miserable life for what you have tried to do to-night; that if others had seen your act I could not have saved you from the living death of a jail?"

"Let me go," she muttered; "you need not fear, I have no other weapon."

He freed her hands.

"Now listen to me," she continued. "I will never leave this place while I can injure you. I have an account to settle with you that is of longer standing than either of our lives, and I believe that I shall live to pay it. Wrong for wrong, blood for blood! I have sworn it."

She stood for a moment motionless in the moonlight, one arm lifted above her head like the figure of an avenging fury; and then fled from him into the darkness.

He stood where she had left him, thinking deeply for some minutes. His brain, which just now had seemed on fire, had grown clear, and he thought with an intensity which only comes in moments of great excitement. His pulses, which had throbbed so violently, had slackened, and the fever of mind and body was gone, chilled by the cold glint of that jewelled dagger which had gleamed so close to him. The passion had gone