"And that is exactly what I have come to talk about.

Miss Roscoe, will you leave the fort with me, and escape in disguise?
I have thought it all out, and it can be done without much difficulty.

I do not need to tell you that the idea has your father's full approval." They were her father's own words, but at sound of them she shrank and shivered, in sheer horror at the coolness with which they were uttered.

He might have been asking her to stroll with him in the leafy quiet of some English lane.
Could it be, she asked herself incredulously, could it be that her father had ever sanctioned and approved so ghastly a risk for her?
She put her hand to her temples.

Her brain was reeling.