There was just time to whisper to him: "Sir Giles has betrayed you.
Save yourself."
"Thank you, whoever you are!"
With that reply, he suddenly and swiftly disappeared. Iris remembered
the culvert, and turned towards it. There was a hiding-place under the
arch, if she could only get down into the dry ditch in time. She was
feeling her way to the slope of it with her feet, when a heavy hand
seized her by the arm; and a resolute voice said: "You are my
prisoner."
She was led back into the road. The man who had got her blew a whistle.
Two other men joined him.
"Show a light," he said; "and let's see who the fellow is."
The shade was slipped aside from a lantern: the light fell full on the
prisoner's face. Amazement petrified the two attendant policemen. The
pious Catholic Sergeant burst into speech: "Holy Mary! it's a woman!"
Did the secret societies of Ireland enrol women? Was this a modern
Judith, expressing herself by anonymous letters, and bent on
assassinating a financial Holofernes who kept a bank? What account had
she to give of herself? How came she to be alone in a desolate field on
a rainy night? Instead of answering these questions, the inscrutable
stranger preferred a bold and brief request. "Take me to Sir
Giles"--was all she said to the police.
The Sergeant had the handcuffs ready. After looking at the prisoner's
delicate wrists by the lantern-light, he put his fetters back in his
pocket. "A lady--and no doubt about it," he said to one of his
assistants.
The two men waited, with a mischievous interest in seeing what he would
do next. The list of their pious officer's virtues included a
constitutional partiality for women, which exhibited the merciful side
of justice when a criminal wore a petticoat. "We will take you to Sir
Giles, Miss," he said--and offered his arm, instead of offering his
handcuffs. Iris understood him, and took his arm.
She was silent--unaccountably silent as the men thought--on the way to
the town. They heard her sigh: and, once, the sigh sounded more like a
sob; little did they suspect what was in that silent woman's mind at
the time.
The one object which had absorbed the attention of Iris had been the
saving of Lord Harry. This accomplished, the free exercise of her
memory had now reminded her of Arthur Mountjoy.
It was impossible to doubt that the object of the proposed meeting at
the milestone had been to take measures for the preservation of the
young man's life. A coward is always more or less cruel. The
proceedings (equally treacherous and merciless) by which Sir Giles had
provided for his own safety, had delayed--perhaps actually
prevented--the execution of Lord Harry's humane design. It was
possible, horribly possible, that a prompt employment of time might
have been necessary to the rescue of Arthur from impending death by
murder. In the agitation that overpowered her, Iris actually hurried
the police on their return to the town.