"Charles Armytage has promised me marriage."
"He's a fool!" was the abrupt rejoinder. "When he knows the truth,
he'll hate you just as much as I do."
"You certainly pay me delicate compliments," she said, drawing herself
up haughtily. "Your hatred is reciprocated, I assure you. But surely
this is not a matter of either love or hatred between us. It is a mere
arrangement for our mutual protection and benefit."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, leaning back upon the mantelshelf
in affected laziness--"you want my silence?"
"Yes," she answered eagerly, looking straight into his dark countenance.
"You're afraid that if you marry Charlie Armytage I may expose you--eh?"
She nodded, with downcast eyes.
He was silent for a few moments.
"Then," he answered at last in a deep, determined voice, "understand
once and for all that Armytage is a friend of mine. He shall never
marry you."
She knit her brows, and her pale lips twitched nervously. "Then you are
still bent upon wrecking my life?" she said slowly and distinctly as she
faced him. "I offer you silence in exchange for my freedom, for it is
you alone who can give me that. Yet you refuse."
"Yes," he said. "I refuse absolutely."
"Then you would debar me from happiness with the man I love?" she said
in a low, deep whisper. "You, the man to whose machinations I owe my
present wretchedness, refuse to free me from the trammels you yourself
have cast about me--you refuse to tell the truth in exchange for my
silence."
He looked at her calmly with withering contempt.
"I have no desire for the silence of such as you," he answered quickly.
"I fear nothing that you may say. Threats from you are mere empty
words, cara."
"Then listen!" she cried, her brilliant eyes again flashing in
desperation. "To-morrow I shall call upon Castellani at the Embassy,
and tell him the truth."
"You dare not!" he gasped fiercely. His face had blanched instantly as,
advancing a couple of steps towards her with clenched hands, he gazed
threateningly into her eyes.
"I have given you an alternative which you have rejected, Signor
Capitano," she said, taking up her fur-trimmed coat. "You defy me; and
I wish you good-night."
"You intend to expose the whole of the facts?" he cried in dismay. "You
will incriminate yourself!"
"I care nothing for that. My happiness is now at an end. For the
future I have no thought, no care, now that you and I are enemies. As I
have already said, traitors die slowly in London, but they do die."
"You shall not go to Castellani," the Captain muttered between his set
teeth; and with a cry of uncurbed, uncontrollable rage he sprang upon
her before she could defend herself or raise an alarm, and seizing her,
he compressed his strong, sinewy fingers upon her slim white throat.
"You shan't go!" he cried. "No further word shall pass your pretty
lips--curse you! I'll--I'll kill you!"