“Go on,” growled Rolph. “A jealous woman will say anything.”
“Jealous? – I? – Pah! – Only angry with myself because I was so weak as to listen to you.”
“And I was so weak as to say anything to a malicious, deceitful cat of a girl, who is spiteful enough to do anything.”
“I, spiteful? – Pah!”
“Well, malicious then.”
“Perhaps I shall be. I wonder what dear Glynne would say about this business. Suppose I told her that our honourable and gallant friend, as they call it in parliament, had been on a visit to that shameless creature whom poor auntie had been compelled to turn away from the house, and in his honourable and gallant visit arrived just in time to witness the end of a lover’s quarrel; perhaps you joined in for ought I know, and – I can’t help laughing – Poor fellow! You did. You have been fighting with your rival, and bruised your knuckles. Did he beat you much, Rob, and win?”
Robert Rolph was dense and brutal enough, and his cousin’s words made him wince, but he looked at the speaker in disgust as the malevolence of her nature forced itself upon him more and more.
“Well,” he cried at last, “I’ve seen some women in my time, but I never met one yet who could stand by and glory in seeing one whom she had looked upon as a sister insulted like poor Judy was.”
“A sister!” cried Marjorie, contemptuously. “Absurd! – a low-born trull!”
“Whom you called dear, and kissed often enough till you thought I liked her, and then – Hang it all, Madge, are you utterly without shame!”
She shrank from him as if his words were thongs which cut into her flesh, but as he ceased speaking, with a passionate sob, she flung her arms about his neck, and clung tightly there.
“Rob! Don’t, I can’t bear it,” she cried. “You don’t know what I have suffered – what agony all this has caused.”
“There, there, that will do,” he said contemptuously. “I am engaged, my dear.”
She sprang from him, and a fierce light burned in her eyes for a moment, but disappointment and her despair were too much for her, and she flung herself upon his breast.
“No, no, Rob, dear, it isn’t true. I couldn’t help hating Judith or any woman who came between us. You don’t mean all this, and it is only to try me. You cannot – you shall not marry Glynne; and as to Judith, it is impossible now.”
“Give over,” he said roughly, as he tried to free himself from her arms.
“No, you sha’n’t go. I must tell you,” she whispered hoarsely amidst her sobs. “I hate Judith, but she is nothing – not worthy of a thought I will never mention her name to you again, dear.”
“Don’t pray,” he cried sarcastically. “If you do, I shall always be seeing you gloating over her trouble as I saw you this morning.”
“It was because I loved you so, Rob,” she murmured as she nestled to him. “It was because I felt that you were mine and mine only, after the past; and all that was forcing her away from you.”
“Bah!” he cried savagely. “Madge! Don’t be a fool! Will you loosen your hands before I hurt you.”
But she clung to him still.
“No, not yet,” she whispered. “You made me love you, Rob, and I forget everything in that. Promise me first that you will break all that off about Glynne Day.”
“I promise you that I’ll get your aunt to place you in a private asylum,” he cried brutally, “if you don’t leave go.”
There was a slight struggle, and he tore himself free, holding her wrists together in his powerful grasp and keeping her at arm’s length.
“There! Idiot!” he cried. “Must I hold you till you come to your senses.”
“If you wish – brute!” she cried through her little white teeth as her lips were drawn away. “Kill me if you like now. I don’t care a bit: you can’t hurt me more than you have.”
“If I hurt you, it serves you right. A nice, ladylike creature, ’pon my soul. Pity my mother hasn’t been here to see the kind of woman she wanted me to marry.”
“Go on,” she whispered, “go on. Insult me: you have a right. Go on.”
“I’m going off,” he said roughly. “There, go up to your room, and have a good hysterical cry and a wash, and come back to your senses. If you will have it you shall, and the whole truth too. I never cared a bit for you. It was all your own doing, leading me on. Want to go.”
“Loose my hands, brute.”
“For you to scratch my face, my red-haired pussy. Not such a fool. I know your sweet temper of old. If I let go, will you be quiet?”
Marjorie made no reply, but she ceased to struggle and stood there with her wrists held, the white skin growing black – a prisoner – till, with a contemptuous laugh, he threw the little arms from him.
“Go and tell Glynne everything you know – everything you have seen, if you like,” he said harshly, “only tell everything about yourself too, and then come back to me to be loved, my sweet, amiable, little white-faced tigress. I’m not afraid though, Madge. You can’t open those pretty lips of yours, can you? It might make others speak in their defence.”
“Brute,” she whispered as she gazed at him defiantly and held out her bruised wrists.
“Brute, am I? Well, let sleeping brutes lie. Don’t try to rouse them up for fear they should bite. Go to your room and bathe your pretty red eyes after having a good cry, and then come and tell me that you think it is best to cry truce, and forget all the past.”
“Never, Rob, dear,” she said with a curious smile. “Go on; but mind this: you shall never marry Glynne Day.”
“Sha’n’t I? We shall see. I think I can pull that off,” he cried with a mocking laugh. “But if I don’t, whom shall I marry?”
She turned from him slowly, and then faced round again as she reached the door.
“Me,” she said quietly; and the next minute Robert Rolph was alone.
Volume One – Chapter Ten.
A Cloudy Sky
“Oh, father, I’m so glad you’ve come.”
This was Ben Hayle’s greeting as he reached the keeper’s lodge.
“Eh? Are you?” he said, with an assumed look of ignorance; but the corners of his eyes were twitching, and he was asking himself how he was to tell his child matters that would nearly break her heart, as he yielded his hand to hers, and let her press him back into his windsor arm-chair. “Nothing the matter, is there?”
She knelt at his feet, and told him all that had passed, and the strong man’s muscles jerked, and his grasp of her arm grew at times painful. As she went on, he interjected a savage word from time to time.
“Good girl, good girl. It has hurt you, my darling, but it was right to tell me all, and keep nothing back.”
Then he laid his hand softly on her glossy hair, and sat staring straight before him at the window, the moments being steadily marked off by the tick-tack of the old eight-day clock in the corner, and no other sound was heard in the room.
Outside, the silence of the fir wood was broken by the cheery lay of a robin in one of the apple-trees of the garden, and once there came the low, soft cooing of a dove, which the soft, sunny autumn day had deluded into the belief that it was spring.
Then all was again silent for a time, and it seemed to Judith, as she looked up into the stern, thoughtful face, with its dark, fierce eyes, that the heavy throbbing of her heart drowned the beat of the clock; at other times the regular tick-tack grew louder, and she could