"
"Me make friends with the scoundrels! I thirst for their lives. Oh,
madam, I fear I shall kill somebody here."
"Foolish boy; they are too strong for you. Your worst enemies could wish
nothing worse for you than that you should provoke them." In saying these
words she was so much more kind and womanly that Alfred conceived hopes,
and burst out, "Oh, madam, you are human then; you seem to pity me; pray
give me pen and paper, and let me write to my friends to get me out of
this terrible place; do not refuse me."
Mrs. Archbold resumed her distant manner without apparent effort: she
said nothing, but she placed writing materials before him. She then left
the room, and locked him in.
He wrote a few hasty ardent words to Julia, telling her how he had been
entrapped, but not a word about his sufferings--he was too generous to
give her needless pain--and a line to Edward, imploring him to come at
once with a lawyer and an honest physician, and liberate him.
Mrs. Archbold returned soon after, and he asked her if she would lend him
sealing-wax: "I dare not trust to an envelope in such a place as this,"
said he.
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