"I have thought, Clara. You are asking an impossibility."
"I am asking you to save your life. You must fly--you must hide, but only for a little while, I trust. You must leave me here to help to hunt down the murderer--to fight for you while you are away."
"She speaks the truth, Gerald. Oh, do listen to her!" pleaded Miss Primby with quivering lips.
"Again I say, you would persuade me to act like a coward."
"Let the world call you what it will. While you are in hiding, your life will be safe. Will it be safe if you stay here?"
Before more could be said, Margery burst without ceremony into the room. "O mum, they're coming!" she cried; "the polis is coming! There's five or six of 'em in two gigs."
"It is too late--we are lost!" cried Clara in anguished accents.
"I ran down to the little hill in the park, 'cos it's getting too dark to see very fer,'" continued Margery; "and when I see 'em come round the corner of the road, a quarter of a mile away, I bolted like a hare, and got the old woman at the lodge to lock the gate, and told her not to open it to anybody for her life. It'll take 'em seven or eight minutes longer to drive round by the other gate," concluded Margery with a burst of witch-like laughter.
"Good girl! brave girl!" ejaculated Miss Primby.
"Then there may yet be time," said Clara. She dropped on one knee, and clasping one of her husband's hands, pressed it passionately to her lips. "O Gerald--if you love me--for my sake!" she cried again.
"You are persuading me to this against my will and against my conscience."
"I am persuading you to save your life, which to me is more than all the world besides."
"Be it as you wish," he answered with a sigh. "I feel as if whatever may happen now cannot greatly matter."
Clara rose, and as she did so, a strange eager light leapt into her eyes. "Come with me--quick, quick!" she exclaimed. "I have thought of a plan. Even now there may be time." Then turning to Miss Primby "You will stay here, aunt, will you not? I shall not be more than a few minutes away."
The spinster nodded; her heart was too full for speech. Then Clara, passing an arm through her husband's, lifted the _portière_, and they went out together.
Left alone, Miss Primby mechanically reverted to her embroidery; but it is to be feared that her doing so was little better than a pretence. She bit her underlip very hard to help her in controlling the nervous emotion which she had much ado not to give way to.