"There's the answer to my doubts. You know too much now. I'll never sleep in peace no more while you are alive. There's a dead dog in yon corner--shrivelled to bones an' leather. He'd lost hisself 'pon the Moor and followed me here. I carried it down the steps, for it stood and barked outside. But I never carried it up again. None leaves this web but me, come in who may. You ran choose how you'll go out o' life--an' that's all the mercy I'll show 'e, Grace Malherb. You can starve, or you can kill yourself, or I can do it for 'e; but die you shall--sure as I'm a woman." The girl regarded her steadily, and measured her huge body, long arms and broad chest. She knew that in a physical struggle she must quickly have the life crushed out of her, and for the first time she feared. Then she wondered if Lovey's heart was inflexible, and whether a way to bend her will might not exist. "Is there no humanity in you--you who have been a mother?" "No more than a mother wolf--not for you. I was a grandmother, too, wasn't I? I brought Jack up from childhood--an' he spied upon me. He'd have robbed me next--maybe he has." "Not of a farthing." "You've met me in a black hour. All's lost to the Prison. Some Judas have told the secret; an' as for me, I dare not show myself to the daylight. So there's nought to be made out of you." "You might trust me." "Not since you've seen that." Lovey pointed to the amphora. "My father rates me higher than a bit of old glass." "You'm daft to think so! Why for should he care a cuss for you? More like he hates you, for you'm no daughter worth naming to him--a froward, man-loving minx, as plays fast an' loose with them he hates, an' defies him. Love the likes of you better'n fifteen thousand pound! He'm not all fool." Thunder suddenly broke overhead, and subterranean echoes in the grotto answered it. The noise punctuated Lovey's speech and appeared to affirm her purpose. "Die you shall," she said. "God do so to me if I don't mean it." "I know you mean it now," answered the girl. "And, since everything is lost at the Prison, I care not very much about living. Yet, after all, 'tis only a passing reverse; therefore, I plead to live. Life is life. Somehow this choking hole makes me long to live. I hate your money and your treasures. I hate the gold in your bags as much as I hate the moss on these walls that mocks it. I want to breathe sweet air and see the sky again. I'll keep your secret. Don't kill me, Lovey. 'Twill ruin your own life if you do." "Life's worth living, as you say. For all my cares and years and cruel disappointments, I like it. But you hearken to the thunder--I knowed 'twas brewing--you know too much. Let it rage! I wish 'twould drown Short's cottage, an' him in it, an' the Prison, an' the prisoners, an' the sojers, an' every living thing. You know too much an' I won't take your word." "You're worn out and frantic. Sleep upon it." The old woman reflected.