"Come--get down," he said, hoarsely. "You have come to call and I want to receive you in my house. I will get a boy to hold your horse."
He looked at her with hungry cunning as he spoke, and the proud spirit of the Dudleys within her rebelled.
"I shall not dismount," she said, backing The Prince a few steps ere she was aware of what she was doing. "My business here can be told briefly, and I haven't time to stay."
She tried to choose her words carefully, for there was so much involved.
"Ah!" he snarled; "so you refuse my hospitality!"
"I do not mean it that way, believe me. But I must hurry, and we can talk as well here."
He came a few paces nearer, covering the distance she had placed between them when she unconsciously backed The Prince.
"I don't like this!" he exclaimed, half rudely, looking at her with bold deviltry in his heavy face. "We are too far apart; friends should be nearer when they talk."
He bared his protruding teeth in a horrible grin as he said this. His shrewd if debased intellect had told him from the first that nothing but the direst need would bring a Dudley to his door on any sort of mission whatsoever. And as he realized that both girl and horse were for the time in his power, a Satanic joy possessed him, and made him toy with the situation, in order to prolong it as far as possible.
"Let me insist on your being my guest as long as you stay!" he leered, trying no longer to cloak the wicked passion which seethed in his tainted soul. "I have wine--refreshments. Come into the parlour where we can talk undisturbed."
A feeling of actual physical nausea shook Julia. She grasped the pommel of her saddle and swayed the least bit, then the sickness passed, and she was erect again, though whiter than one dead. She seemed the wraith of the girl who had ridden down the road. She did not know why this man should insist so strongly on her entering his door. She knew that he had pretended to love her, but that was over now, and gone. They had not seen each other for months. He could not wish to entertain her for any worthy reason, and though she could neither comprehend nor even suspect the depths of vileness in his heart, she knew that she had best remain where she was.