Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/197

 the conspiracy against his life, but of her prescience in detecting it. "It must be witchcraft, and nothing else. How could you learn what you tell me?"

"That is my affair; enough for you that I am right. Go no more to those black haunts; they are even now full of snares and pitfalls for you. Leave London, and you are safe. Trust to me."

"And where shall I go?"

"Look you, Jasper; you have worn out this old world no refuge for you but the new. Whither went your father, thither go you. Consent, and you shall not want. You cannot discover Sophy. You have failed in all attempts on Darrell's purse. But agree to sail to Australasia, and I will engage to you an income larger than you say you extorted from Poole, to be spent in those safer shores."

"And you will go with me, I suppose," said Losely, with ungracious sullenness.

"Go with you, as you please. Be where you are--yes." The ruffian bounded with rage and loathing.

"Woman, cross me no more, or I shall be goaded into--"

"Into killing me--you dare not! Meet my eye if you can--you dare not! Harm me, yea a hair of my head, and your moments are numbered!--your doom sealed. Be we two together in a desert--not a human eye to see the deed--not a human ear to receive my groan, and still I should stand by your side unharmed. I, who have returned the wrongs received from you, by vigilant, untiring benefits--I, who have saved you from so many enemies, and so many dangers--I, who, now when all the rest of earth shun you--when all other resource fails-I, who now say to you, 'Share my income, but be honest!' I receive injury from that hand. No; the guilt would be too unnatural--Heaven would not permit it. Try, and your arm will fall palsied by your side!"

Jasper's bloodshot eyes dropped beneath the woman's fixed and scorching gaze, and his lips, white and tremulous, refused to breathe the fierce curse into which his brutal nature concentrated its fears and its hate. He walked on in gloomy silence; but some words she had let fall suggested a last resort to his own daring.

She had urged him to quit the old world for the new,