"Why?" I panted, for want of better words.
"Because you know now who imprisoned you, and if you escaped you would tell it to the world. I dare not let the world know this, so you and Eli will have to die."
I felt sure there was some trick in this, although I could not tell what it was.
"But if I had been set free the world would have known," I replied.
"No, you would have been taken to a far-off spot, and you would never have known where your prison was, nor could you have sworn who imprisoned you."
"But I am going to escape," I said, still keeping my eyes on him, while I could hear Eli grunting as he struggled with the serving-man.
"No," he said, "you are as weak as a baby. Your strength even now has gone. You thought bodily strength everything; I, on the other hand, know that brains is more than bodily strength. Do you think I did not know who I was dealing with? You are a fool. Every mouthful of food you have been eating while you have been here has kept you weak. Now you are no match for me. And I am going to kill you! Shall I tell you where you are? You are at Trevose, the house that was Naomi's. Shall I tell you something else?" and he laughed mockingly. "Naomi Penryn loved you--but she's dead; and now Trevose House and lands belong to the Tresidders, do you see?"
Then, I know not how, but a great strength came to me, an unnatural strength. My heart grew cold, but my hands and arms felt like steel. His bitter, mocking words seemed to dry up all the milk of human kindness in my nature. At that moment I ceased to be a man. I was simply an instrument of vengeance. His words gave me a great joy on the one hand, for I knew he would not have told me she loved me, did he not believe it to be true, but this only intensified my feeling of utter despair caused by those terrible words, "But she's dead." I felt sure, too, that she had been persecuted; I knew instinctively of all that she had had to contend with, how they brought argument after argument to persuade her to marry Nick, and how, because she had refused, they had slowly but surely killed her.
And Nick gloated over the fact that Trevose lands belonged to him as though that were the result of good luck rather than as the outcome of systematic cruelty and murder.