"Very true," responded the emboldened lady; "yet on the other hand"--

He put out an interrupting touch. "The child is as safe with me as if it
were in its mother's bosom."

"Oh, it isn't so much a question of safety as"--

The father interrupted again, with a gleam in his eyes like the
outflashing of a knife. "I hold the child against all comers, and would
if I had to slay its mother to do it."

Mrs. Morris stifled an outcry and would have left him, but he would not
let her.

"Stay! Oh, listen to a soul in torment! The babe is already motherless.
Isabel can never return, mother; she is with the dead. I am not waiting
idly here for her; I am waiting busily--for her slayer. He has fled; but
when he sees he is not pursued he will come back to the spot,--to the
black, black hole. He cannot help it. I _know_ that. Oh, how well I
know it! And the moment he comes he is caught,--caught in the web of
proofs I am weaving!"

He held her arm and gazed into her gazing eyes in ferocious fear of the
web she might be weaving for him; while she, reeling sick with fear of
him, tried with all her shaken wits to sham an impassioned accord.

"And you _will_ wait?" she exclaimed approvingly. "You will not
stir till the thing is sure?"