CHAPTER LXI.

HUNTED DOWN.

"You don't believe me! You think to escape, or put me down with these fine-lady airs. Perhaps you mean to complain to the young man up yonder, and set him to worrying me again. Try that--only try it! I ask nothing better. Let him interfere with me if he dares. Have you nothing to say?"

"Nothing!" answered Ruth, with quiet dignity, for contempt had conquered all the terror in her.

"Nothing! Then I will make you speak, understand this. You cannot put me down. No one can do that. Father and son, I am the master of them all!"

"Go!" said Ruth, wearied with his bombastic threats, for such she considered them. "Go!"

"Go! Do I frighten you?"

"You weary me--that is all."

"Then you do not believe what I say?"

"No!"

"You think the young man up yonder everything that is good."

"Yes!"

"Well, I think--But no matter. You will soon learn more than you want to hear. This is enough. I can tear the Hurst pride up by the roots. I can make them hide their faces in the dust, and I will, if you drive me to it."

"I?"

"Yes, you! It all depends on you. That young fellow's blood will be on your own head if I am brought to strike him down!"

"His blood on my head! His! Are you mad, or only fiendish, Richard Storms?"

"This is what I am, Ruth Jessup--the man who can prove who killed your father. The man who can hang your sweetheart on the highest gallows ever built in England. That is what I am, and what I will do, if you ever speak to him again."

"You! You!"

It was all the poor girl could say, this awful threat came on her so suddenly.

"You believe me. You would give the world not to believe me, but you do. Well, instead of the world you shall give me yourself. I want you enough to give up revenge for your sake. Isn't that love? I want you because of your obstinacy, which I mean to break down, day by day, till you are humble enough."

Ruth smiled scornfully. She had been so often terrified by such language that it had lost its force.

"I do not believe you," she said. "Would not believe an angel, if he dared to say so much."

"Will you believe your father's own handwriting?"

Storms took from an inner pocket of his vest a folded letter. Ruth knew it in an instant. It was the letter she had placed in her husband's hand that day when she saw him for one moment asleep in his chamber at "The Rest."

"Ha! ha! You turn white without reading it! You guess what it is. The handwriting is large enough to read at a safe distance. Make it out for yourself."

Ruth fastened her burning eyes on the paper, which he unfolded and held between his two hands, so near that she could make out the great crude letters; but it was beyond her reach had she attempted to possess herself of it, which he seemed to fear.

"Does that mean anything? Is that a confession?"

Ruth did not answer, but dropped into a chair, faint and white, still gazing on the paper.

"Do you want more proof? Well, I can give it you, for I saw the thing done. Do you want the particulars?"

"No! no! Spare me!" cried the poor girl, lifting both hands.

"Of course, I mean to spare you. One doesn't torment his wife till he gets her!"

"Spare him!" pleaded the poor girl. "Never mind me, but spare him. He has never harmed you."

"Never harmed me! Who was it that he hurled, like a dog, from that very door? Whose sweetheart was it that he stole? Never harmed me! Spare him! That is for you to do. No one else on this earth can spare him!"

"But how?"

The words trembled, coldly, from her white lips.

"How? By marrying the man you were promised to."

A faint moan was her only answer.

"By carrying out your murdered father's bargain. That is the only way. Shudder down, twist and wind as you will, that is the only way."

Ruth shook her head. She could not speak.

"I have got some matter to settle with Sir Noel, for you are only half my price. There must be land and gold thrown in on his part, a wedding on yours, before I promise to hold my tongue, or give up this paper. Love, money, or vengeance. These are my terms. He takes it hard--so do you, quaking like a wounded hare in its form. The sight of it does me good. Gold, land, the prettiest wife on this side of England, who shall give me a taste of vengeance, too, before I have done with her. All these things I mean to enjoy to the full."

Still Ruth did not utter a word. The horror in her position struck the power of speech from her.

"I see. Nothing but love for this murderer could make your face so white. Nothing but hate of me could fill your eyes with such frightened loathing. But I mean to change all that, before you have been my wife a twelvemonth. Only remember this: you must never see Walton Hurst again--never. I shall keep watch. If you look at him, if you speak to him before we are wedded, I will give him up to the law that hour. If he ever crosses my path after that, I shall know how to make my wife suffer."

Still Ruth did not speak.

"You know my terms, now. The moment Sir Noel signs the deeds I'm getting ready, he seals my lips. When our marriage certificate is signed, I give up this paper. Then there is nothing for us but love or hate. I have a taste for both. Come, now, say which it shall be."

While he was speaking, Storms had drawn close to the chair on which Ruth sat, still and passive. With the last audacious words on his lips, he stooped down, pressed them to hers, and started back, for they had met the coldness of snow.

"Fainting again? I will soon cure her of these tricks," he muttered, looking down into the still, white face he had desecrated with a kiss. "Well, she knows what to depend on now, and can take her own time for coming to. I only hope Sir Noel will be as easily settled; but he fights hard. I half wish he would say no, that I might pull him down to his knees. It would be rare sport. Only I'd rather take revenge on the young master. That comes with the wife, and the old baronet's money thrown in."

With these thoughts weaving in and out of his brain, Storms left the house, for he had no hesitation in leaving that poor girl to recover from her dead insensibility alone. It was perhaps the only mercy he could have awarded her.