Part 18

"It's just hopeless, Nanna, to stay on here in this city of the dead."

She stopped and faced her sister.

"So I have decided; I am going back to my mother's people. There is a chance in their world for a woman to secure her own living; here she can only starve or accept some man's protection."

The elder woman remonstrated feebly, but the girl swept her aside.

"Listen to me, Nanna. You know that Messer Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, is my uncle, my mother's own brother. She ever insisted that in his charity I had a final resource. He might not offer it, but surely he could not deny me, if I sought it. Nanna, you recall what the mother herself said--how she always believed that the message would reach him. My own uncle and Councillor Primus of Croye," she concluded, hopefully.

But Nanna was not to be so easily convinced. "But, Esmay, it is impossible," she exclaimed. "You could never escape from Doom."

"But I will."

"You cannot. The High Bridge to the north is always guarded, and on the other three sides of the city there is deep water."

"I shall manage it," returned the girl, confidently. "It is simply a question of my going empty-handed to my uncle's house. Now gold among the House-dwellers has a value that it does not possess with us; so Ulick once told me. They use it as money."

"Here in Doom it is nothing," assented Nanna, "save that we women like the pretty things that the ancients fashioned from it."

"Precisely; and as you know there is not much of it in existence, even here in Doom, where silver is almost as common as iron."

"Well, and then?"

"Don't you see? If only golden tongues could plead my cause in Croye I should be independent, even of my uncle Hugolin. Now there is store of this gold somewhere in Doom. It must be so, for the war-galleys always carry a money-chest when they sail to the northern colonies."

"A treasure," said Nanna, slowly. "Who would know of it here in Doom? Dom Gillian himself--or perhaps----"

"Master Quinton Edge," supplied Esmay, and thereupon silence fell between them.

The minutes passed away. Then, suddenly, Esmay stopped in her monotonous pacing of the room and flung herself on her knees by her sister's chair.

"You goose!" she exclaimed, with tender suspicion. "I believe you have been crying."

"Not a bit of it," returned Nanna, sitting bolt upright and staring hard at the ceiling. "I only want you to be sure and let me know before you go. Or couldn't you take me with you?" she added, wistfully, as though the idea had but just occurred to her.

"Why, Nanna, as though I could have dreamed of anything else! Go without you! Don't you see yourself how ridiculous that would be?"

"Then nothing else matters," said Nanna, comfortably, and openly wiped her eyes. "When do you want to go--to-night?"

"Foolish one! But then you love me, and I can forgive you. Now let me be quiet; I want to think out my--our plan."

Nanna left the room softly. Esmay sat looking into the fire, her small, firm chin propped in her palm. So violent was the storm that she did not hear the opening and closing of the street-door, but the flickering of the lamp in the swirl of a current from the outer air warned her that she had a visitor. She recognized him instantly as he came forward, his laced hat in the hollow of his arm. There was no one in Doom besides Master Quinton Edge who bowed with so easy a grace--a woman has a quick eye for such trifles.

"You are Esmay, daughter of Mad Scarlett," he began, gently. "My intrusion is unseasonable, perhaps, but none the less unavoidable."

The girl made no answer.

"I will speak to the point," he went on. "Are you ready to make choice, to-night, between young Ulick and his oafish cousin Boris? I have a reason for asking, believe me."

Esmay flushed with annoyance. "I will not listen to either of them," she said. "Boris I detest, and Ulick is only a boy, and a silly one; I have told him so a score of times."

"I thought as much, but I wanted the confirmation of your own lips, my dear child. The knowledge emboldens me to offer you an asylum under my own roof for the next few months--or longer. Ulick, as you say, is but a boy, half hot, half muddle-head. He, perhaps, could be kept in check----"

"I can manage that sufficiently well," broke in the girl, haughtily.