“It is a hard thing to ask of a husband who loves you more than any woman in the world,” he answered turning aside his head.

“Remember,” she went on, with another flash of defiant spirit, “that if you do not, you will soon love me better than any woman out of the world, or perhaps we shall both settle what lies between us before the Judgment Seat of God.  Will you swear?”

He hesitated.

Oh! she reflected, what if he should answer—­“Rather than this I hand you over to Ramiro”?  What if he should think of that argument?  Happily for her, at the moment he did not.

“Swear,” she implored, “swear,” clinging with her hands to the lappet of his coat and lifting to him her white and piteous face.

“I make it an offering in expiation of my sins,” he groaned, “you shall go free of me.”

Elsa uttered a sigh of relief.  She put no faith whatever in Adrian’s promises, but at the worst it would give her time.

“I thought that I should not appeal in vain——­”

“To so amusing and egregious a donkey,” said Ramiro’s mocking voice speaking from the gloom of the doorway, which now Elsa observed for the first time had swung open mysteriously.

“My dear son and daughter-in-law, how can I thank you sufficiently for the entertainment with which you have enlivened one of the most dreary afternoons I remember.  Don’t look dangerous, my boy; recall what you have just told this young lady, that the crime of removing a parent is one which, though agreeable, is not lightly to be indulged.  Then, as to your future arrangements, how touching!  The soul of a Diana, I declare, and the self-sacrifice of a—­no, I fear that the heroes of antiquity can furnish no suitable example.  And now, adieu, I go to welcome the gentleman you both of you so eagerly expect.”

He went, and a minute later without speaking, for the situation seemed beyond words, Adrian crept down the stairs after him, more miserable and crushed even than he had crept up them half an hour before.

Another two hours went by.  Elsa was in her apartment with Black Meg for company, who watched her as a cat watches a mouse in a trap.  Adrian had taken refuge in the place where he slept above.  It was a dreary, vacuous chamber, that once had held stones and other machinery of the mill now removed, the home of spiders and half-starved rats, that a lean black cat hunted continually.  Across its ceiling ran great beams, whereof the interlacing ends, among which sharp draughts whistled, lost themselves in gloom, while, with an endless and exasperating sound, as of a knuckle upon a board, the water dripped from the leaky roof.

In the round living-chamber below Ramiro was alone.  No lamp had been lit, but the glow from the great turf fire played upon his face as he sat there, watching, waiting, and scheming in the chair of black oak.  Presently a noise from without caught his quick ear, and calling to the serving woman to light the lamp, he went to the door, opened it, and saw a lantern floating towards him through the thick steam of falling rain.  Another minute and the bearer of the lantern, Hague Simon, arrived, followed by two other men.