"And so I will, pretty one, when we are tired of each other's
company--not a jot sooner." He seized her by the arm, while, incapable
of further defence, she uttered shriek upon shriek. "Nay, scream away if
you like it," said he, still holding her fast; "I have heard the sea
at the loudest, and I mind a squalling woman no more than a miauling
kitten. Damn me! I have heard fifty or a hundred screaming at once, when
there was a town stormed."
The cries of the Countess, however, brought unexpected aid in the person
of Lawrence Staples, who had heard her exclamations from his apartment
below, and entered in good time to save her from being discovered,
if not from more atrocious violence. Lawrence was drunk also from the
debauch of the preceding night, but fortunately his intoxication had
taken a different turn from that of Lambourne.
"What the devil's noise is this in the ward?" he said. "What! man and
woman together in the same cell?--that is against rule. I will have
decency under my rule, by Saint Peter of the Fetters!"
"Get thee downstairs, thou drunken beast," said Lambourne; "seest thou
not the lady and I would be private?"
"Good sir, worthy sir!" said the Countess, addressing the jailer, "do
but save me from him, for the sake of mercy!"
"She speaks fairly," said the jailer, "and I will take her part. I love
my prisoners; and I have had as good prisoners under my key as they have
had in Newgate or the Compter. And so, being one of my lambkins, as I
say, no one shall disturb her in her pen-fold. So let go the woman: or
I'll knock your brains out with my keys."
"I'll make a blood-pudding of thy midriff first," answered Lambourne,
laying his left hand on his dagger, but still detaining the Countess by
the arm with his right. "So have at thee, thou old ostrich, whose only
living is upon a bunch of iron keys."
Lawrence raised the arm of Michael, and prevented him from drawing his
dagger; and as Lambourne struggled and strove to shake him off; the
Countess made a sudden exertion on her side, and slipping her hand
out of the glove on which the ruffian still kept hold, she gained her
liberty, and escaping from the apartment, ran downstairs; while at the
same moment she heard the two combatants fall on the floor with a noise
which increased her terror. The outer wicket offered no impediment to
her flight, having been opened for Lambourne's admittance; so that she
succeeded in escaping down the stair, and fled into the Pleasance, which
seemed to her hasty glance the direction in which she was most likely to
avoid pursuit.