The woman
had listened with a bitter smile. As he finished, she rose and
approached him. Her eyes burned in the pale face like coals of fire.
"There is a better thing than despair!" she said.
"What?"
"Vengeance!"
And grasping his arm almost violently:--
"That man is yonder!" she said, pointing with the other hand toward
Warrenton, "Go and meet him, and kill him, and end all this at once!
Remember the banks of the Nottaway!--That sword thrust--that grave!
Remember, he hates you with a deadly hatred--has wounded you, laughed
at you,--driven you back, when you met him, like a hound under the
lash! Remember me!--your oath! Break that oath and I will go and kill
him myself!"
As she uttered these words a cannon shot thundered across the woods.
"Listen!" the woman exclaimed.
Darke rose suddenly to his feet.
"You are right!" he said, gloomily. "You keep me to the work. I do not
hate him as you do--but he is an enemy, and I will kill him. Why do I
yield to you, and obey you thus? What makes me love you, I wonder!"
Suddenly a second gun roared from beyond Buckland.
"We will talk of that afterward," said the woman, with flushed cheeks;
"think of one thing only now--that _he_ is yonder."
"Good!" said Darke, "and I hope that in an hour one of us will be dead,
I care not which--come, madam--but you must not expose yourself!"
"What am I!"
"All I have left!" he said.
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