“I’ll plunge it in my own throat if you come nearer,”—she cried—a white fury with a line of gleaming teeth showing through her white lips. A mask of hatred that struck him dumb. Not a brave man, though a showy, he tried to temporize.— After a minute’s hesitation— “Put it down, my girl—put it down. I won’t frighten you. You’ll hurt yourself.” She said no more, but stood rigid. A moment and Macheath flung out his arm suddenly to catch the weapon from her. She sprang aside, and he tripped his foot on the claw of the table and sprawled over it. Like lightning she rushed to the window and flung up the sash. “Help—all good people! Help a poor girl trapped and held here by a villain!” Her screams rang through the street, and a kind of terror that was half hatred seized the man lest she ruin him outright. He sprang at her, and holding her with the strength of fear and fury, bound her wrists once more, and when he had her helpless, bound her ankles also, and lifting her, flung her on the sofa. “Lie there till I loose you,” he cries. “Hunger tames beasts and may tame a wild cat like you. I leave you here till tomorrow, and if you come not to your senses when I return with the parson, ’twill be the worse for you.” He took a third strip of stuff and bound it over her mouth, then stood a moment looking at her. “You’ve yourself to thank for this rough usage. I would have dealt otherwise with any but a fury. Learn wisdom now, before ’tis too late.” He extinguished the light, leaving her in darkness and went out, locking the door behind him, to seek counsel of Mrs. Bishop. The affair had reached a point that terrified him, and he knew not how to go back nor forward. Flight, not love, was his present inclination, and he thought never to return. So she passed the night of Saturday and the day of Sunday. CHAPTER XVI THE Duke, on leaving my Lord Baltimore with his former inamorata, strode down into the street, and stood for a moment in deep thought. ’Twas Mr. Rich was in his mind—that and the resolution to have done for good and all with his former friend and follow his search alone. The woman Bishop sickened him—Baltimore scarce less. ’Twas such a bewilderment of lies and intrigues as an honest man scarce could cut his way through. Better act alone, and if more slowly more certainly. So standing a minute, he called a chair and directed the men to Rich’s house in Bloomsbury. He had never entered it—their meeting being at the playhouse or other haunts of amusement, and certainly this occasion on which he made his bow there was the last he would have chose. To speak of Mrs. Fenton to any man was as distasteful to him as if she had been his sister—or his wife.