“Here is another five-pound note,” said Mrs Riversley coldly; “five five-pound notes. I gave you ten pounds before, and you only gave that woman half.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know your grasping character,” said Mrs Riversley firmly. “Now – quick – do you decide? Try to extort more, and finding what you are, I shall risk all discovery, and bear the shame sooner than be under your heel. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” said the woman surlily.
“Quick, then; get your things and go. I will bring you the dress and jacket.”
“Ain’t I to say good-bye to Miss Mary?”
“No,” said Mrs Riversley firmly. “Now go.”
The woman stood biting the side of one of her fingers for a few moments, and seemed to hesitate; but the rustle of the new bank-notes as Mrs Riversley laid them upon the table and placed a paperweight upon them decided her, and in an incredibly short time she stood once more in the room, in her best clothes, and with a bulky bundle tied up in an old Paisley shawl.
Five minutes later she had received the money without a word being spoken on either side, and was standing just out of sight of the cottage, by the stream, hugging the bundle to her with one hand, and gnawing at the side of her finger.
“What a fool I was!” she muttered viciously. “She’d have given double if I’d pressed her, and I’m put off now with a beggarly thirty pound a year. I’ve a good mind to go back.”
She took a few steps in the direction of the cottage, but stopped with a grim chuckle.
“Thirty pound a year regular for doing nothing is better than ten pound and lots of work. Perhaps we should only quarrel, for she’s a hard one when she’s up. But I might have had more.”
She stood thinking for a few moments.
“What shall I do?” she muttered. “If I leave it with them they’ll kill it in a week, and then there’s an end of it, and I get my money for nothing. If I fetch it away I have to keep it. But it may be worth my while. Mrs Riversley ain’t everybody, for there’s Miss Mary, and there’s him, and if he isn’t a swell, t’other one is, I’m sure. What’s that?”
She started in affright, for just then a strange, hoarse shriek rang out of the wood to her left, and it sounded so wild and agonising that she stood trembling and listening for awhile.
“It was like as if someone had jumped into one of the deep river holes or the big pit,” she muttered; “but I dursen’t go to see. It was very horrid.”
Whatever the cry, it was not repeated, and the woman hurried on for about a mile, when, coming to a side lane, she hesitated as to the course she should take, and ended by going straight on.
At the end of a score of paces she stopped short, turned and hurried back to the side lane, down which she walked as fast as her bundle would let her.
“I don’t care, I will,” she muttered; “thirty pound a year will keep us both. I’ll fetch him away; he may be worth his weight in gold.”
They were about equal in height and build, and apparently within a year of the same age, the one dark, and wearing, what was unusual in those days, a short crisp beard and moustache; the other fair and closely-shaven as to lip and chin, but with a full brown whisker clothing his cheeks.
The former was evidently terribly agitated, for his face worked and he was very pallid, while the latter looked flushed and nervous, the hand that grasped his trout-rod twitching convulsively; and he kept glancing at his companion as they strode along past the cottage.
“What I ask you is” – the darker of the two was saying.
“For Heaven’s sake be silent till we get farther on, Rob, and I’ll tell you all you want to know.”
There was silence for awhile, and the two young men walked rapidly on, turning through a woodland path, when the trees caught the rod of the one addressed as Rob, and he cast it impatiently aside, stopping short directly after in an opening where the path wound round the brink of a deep gravel-pit, the wayfarer being protected from a fall by a stout oaken railing.
“Now, sir,” exclaimed the first speaker excitedly; “no one can hear us.”
“No,” said the fair man in a nervous, hesitating way. “Go on; say what you have to say.”
“It is soon said, James Huish. I have been away with my regiment in Canada two years. Previous to that chance threw me into the company of a sweet, pure girl, little more than a child then. I used to come down here fishing.”
“You did!” exclaimed the other hoarsely.
“I did, and visited at that cottage time after time. Man, man, I tell you,” he continued, speaking rapidly in his excitement, “the recollection of those days has been my solace in many a bitter winter’s night, and I have looked forward to my return as the great day of my existence.”
“Stop!” said the other nervously. “Tell me this, Rob: did she – did she love you?”
“Love me?” exclaimed the other passionately: “no. How could I expect it? She was a mere child, budding into maidenhood; but her eyes brightened when I came, and she was my little companion here in the happy days that can never be recalled. James Huish, I loved that girl with all my soul. My love has grown for her, and my first thought was to seek her on my return, and try to win her for my wife.”
“It’s deuced unfortunate, Rob,” said the other in his nervous way. Then, with a kind of bravado, he continued half laughingly: “But then, you see, you have been away two years, and you have stopped away too long. It’s a pity, too, such friends as we were.”
Ere he had finished speaking his companion had seized his arm as in a vice.
“Huish!” he cried hoarsely, “if you speak to me in that tone of voice I will not answer for the consequences. I do not wish to be rash, or to condemn you unheard; but this is of such vital import to me that, by God, if you speak of it in that flippant tone again, I shall forget that we are gentlemen, and, like some brute beast, I shall have you by the throat.”
“Loose my arm,” exclaimed the other, flushing more deeply; “you hurt me.”
“You hurt me,” cried the other, trembling with passion – “to the heart.”
“If I have wronged you,” exclaimed Huish, “even if duelling is out of fashion, I can give you satisfaction.”
“Satisfaction!” cried the other bitterly. “Look here, James Huish. You have been a man of fashion, while I have been a blunt soldier. If what I hear be true, would it be any satisfaction for me to shoot you through the head, and break that poor girl’s heart, for I could do it if I liked; and if I did not, would it be any satisfaction to let you make yourself a murderer?”
Huish shuddered slightly, and the colour paled in his cheeks.
“Now answer my question. I say, is this true?”
“We are old friends,” retorted Huish, “but you have no right to question me.”
“Right or no right, I will question you,” exclaimed the other passionately, “and answer me you shall before you leave this spot.”
Huish glanced uneasily to the right and left, and, seeing this, his companion laid his hand once more upon his arm.
“No,” he exclaimed, “you do not go; and for your own sake, do not provoke me.”
The speaker’s voice trembled with rage, which he seemed to be fighting hard to control, while Huish was by turns flushed with anger, and pale with something near akin to fear.
“I will not answer your questions,” he exclaimed desperately.
“You promised me you would, and you shall, James Huish. Look here, sir. A little over two years ago there was a servant at the cottage