voice, had awakened Lucretia's reason to consciousness and the sense of
peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had
passed.

"Fly, fly!" she gasped, as she concluded. "Fly, to detain, to secrete,
this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then; I
have done the rest!" and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney
waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the
stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale
elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word,
but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered
the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he sprang
on his back,--

"I, too, must go towards Southampton. The poor young lady! I must
prepare your master,--he is on his road back to us;" and the last word
was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the
horse's hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.

As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more
rapidly than the animal he bestrode,--sped from fear to hope, hope to
assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,--incoherent,
improbable as the tale would be,--who would believe it? How easy to meet
tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the
tapestry,--wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had
coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through the
day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed,
and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy. Tush! his
tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium. Still, it was
well to track him where he went,--delay him, if possible; and Varney's