"You defy me!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "You dare me to my
worst?"
She looked up at his dark cruel face, his glittering eyes, and
shuddered as with icy cold,--but the spirit in that delicate little
body of hers was strong as steel, and tempered to the grandest
issues.
"I dare you to do your worst!" she said, half-sobbingly,--half-
closing her eyes in the nervous terror she could not altogether
control. "You can but kill me--I shall die true!"
With a sort of savage cry, Gherardi snatched her round the waist,
but scarcely had he done so when he was flung aside with a force
that made him reel back heavily against the wall, and Aubrey Leigh
confronted him.
"Aubrey!" cried Sylvie. "Oh, Aubrey!"
He caught her as she sprang to him, and held her fast,--and with
perfect self-possession he eyed the priest disdainfully up and down.
"So this," he said coldly, "is the way the followers of Saint Peter
fulfil the commands of Christ! Or shall we say this is the way in
which they go on denying their Master? It is a strange way of
retaining disciples,--a still stranger way of making converts! A
brave way too, to intimidate a woman!"
Gherardi, recovering from the shock of Aubrey's blow, drew himself
up haughtily.
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