“Could you?”--she pointed to his foot that was still bandaged. He felt her contemptuous eyes on his body that was thin and shaken with fever. “And have you money that you could send her to England and take care of her? Supposing she and you ever got out of the scrub! “This is my house to all purposes. If I told the black women to put you out to-night they would do it. And I suppose you know what would come to you then! You can believe in me or not, as you like,” she said, with sudden quietude, “but you cannot dictate terms to me, or threaten me.” For a long minute there was utter silence in the room. Then Heriot, very white about the mouth, rose. “I have to beg your pardon,” he said. “You are quite right. I am in your debt.” But as he turned to go back to his old quarters and get away from this woman, she saw that she had only made him distrust her more determinedly. CHAPTER XIX. TRUSTED TOO LATE. To Heriot’s utter surprise, Salome at seven o’clock brought him a message that the ladies were expecting him at dinner. It occurred to him suddenly that second thoughts had convinced the late Mrs. Erle that a man who had been able to come to her secluded retreat would be able to get away from it, and that the strange disappearance of even an orphan girl might be a thing to report to the police. To be the jailer of a kidnaped damsel would not add glory to the record of any woman. Before Beryl neither of the two betrayed their private position. Andria was quiet, that was all. She let Heriot talk to the girl as freely as he liked, and, in spite of his prejudice, he saw that she never tried to stop any disclosures of the terror that haunted them at night. It was only when dinner was over that he saw her expression change. A quick remembrance had come to her. The servants had gone to bed; she dared not let even her enemy, who might at any minute betray Beryl’s faith in her, cross that courtyard in the dark. Walls were no obstacles to the evening visitors at the house; she had a quick, sickening vision of a snarling pounce, a sound of worrying, and then a scream and a crunching and tearing of flesh. And in the vision, too, something that squatted on the wall and hounded on its dreadful servants. “Mr. Heriot,” she had risen abruptly from the comfortable chair where her thoughts had been a torment that even Heriot might have pitied, thoughts of old days that had come back to her as if risen with this man from the dead, “Mr. Heriot, it’s dark! Do you know you can’t go back to your rooms?” “I never meant to,” he answered quietly. “Did you think that, after hearing all I have, I was going to leave you two alone to face the night?” To his surprise, it was Beryl who bestowed a somber glance on him; there was a queer relief on Andria’s face. “You ought to have gone!” the girl cried. “You will only be a trouble here.” “I’ll try not to be,” he laughed, in spite of himself. “I can sleep quite well on this sofa.” “If you sleep anywhere!”