Hunted by his creditors and threatened with imprisonment, the Count was now desperate. In such a position he had, more than once during his career, showed no disposition to stick at trifles. His yacht lay within hail—a seabird with her great wings plumed for instant flight, a Norway falcon looking on ocean from a low-placed rocky ridge. His crew of mixed nationality, who had followed him through many a clime, were lawless and devoted. The hour had come when Albert von Schätterheims would stand forth with front unveiled, and show these simple dwellers by the shore of the southern main what manner of man they had dared to drive to bay. Therefore, when Antonia Frankston stepped forward, and with head erect and flashing eye interposed between the Count and his sacrifice, she confronted a different man from the silky, graceful _serviteur des dames_ with whom she had often wished, for some instinctive reason, to quarrel. ‘I cannot go with you now, nor shall Miss Folleton, Count Schätterheims; it would not be right, in my father’s absence. Permit us to return to the house.’ ‘Beholt me desoladed if Miss Frankstein will not honour my poor boad,’ said the Count, as he barred the progress of the two young ladies on the somewhat narrow green-walled alley which led to the house; ‘but’—fixing his eye steadily upon Harriet Folleton—‘I go not forth alone; Miss Harriet Folledon, you bromised me. I haf your vord. You vill come with me now; is it not so, belofet one? Ja! you vill follow de fortunes of Albert von Schätterheims, for efer.’ He strode forward a pace, and seizing the wrist of the frightened girl, spoke rapidly in Spanish, while two of his sailors ran up from the boat, to whom he committed the half-insensible form of the fainting girl. Antonia Frankston did not faint or swoon. With sudden movement she confronted the Count, with so fierce an air and so unblenching a brow that he involuntarily stepped back a pace, and made as though to protect himself from the onset of a foe. ‘Coward and robber that you are, release her this instant,’ she cried. The Count smiled sardonically. ‘You will parton me, mademoiselle, if I redurn you with my complimend for your goot opinion. My engachemends is more pressing, as you gan pelief.’ On the girl’s face, as she stood with threatening aspect—a young Bellona, as yet unversed in battles—burned a deeper glow; in her eye flashed a fiercer light as she marked the smile on the calm features of the Count, which, in her heated fancy, seemed the mocking regard of a fiend. ‘She shall _not_ go!’ cried she, springing forward and throwing her arms round the neck of the helpless maid. ‘Oh that my father were here—or Ernest —— Robbers, villains, assassins that you are, release her—don’t dare to touch _me_!’