"Then you must stay here, miss, for weeks and weeks, months and months,
and every day be like this. Your friends will never find you--never!"

"Sarah, look here! I shall be dead in a week, and I'll haunt you--I vow
I will! I'll haunt you until I make your life a misery to you!"

Sarah smiled quietly.

"I am not afraid, miss. You're a great deal too young and too healthy to
die; and you won't kill yourself, for life is too sweet, even in prison.
The best thing you can do is to marry master, and be restored to your
friends."

"Sarah Grant--if that be your name," said Mollie, with awful
calmness--"go away! if you only come here to insult me like that,
don't come here at all."

Sarah courtesied respectfully, and immediately left. But her words had
made their mark. In spite of Mollie's appealing dignity, any avenue of
escape--even that--was beginning to took inviting.

"Suppose I went through the form of a ceremony with this man?" mused
Mollie. "It wouldn't mean anything, you know, because I did it upon
compulsion; and, immediately I got out, I should go straight and marry
Sir Roger. But I won't do it--of course, I won't! I'll be imprisoned
forever before I yield!"

But you know it has got to be a proverb, "When a woman hesitates, she is
lost." Mollie had begun to hesitate, and Mollie was lost.