"Go on! Yes, I will go on.Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold in the hollow of my hand.As for you--do you know that people are beginning to discuss you? Gossip is easily stirred in the country, where people are so bored that they chatter in self-defence.I have been considered a bad lot.I have become curiously attached to my sister-in-law.I am seen hanging about her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together.An American young woman is not like an English girl--she is used to seeing the marriage ceremony juggled with.There's a trifle of prejudice against such young women when they are too rich and too handsome.Don't look at me like that!" he burst forth, with maddened sharpness, "I won't have it!"The girl was regarding him with the expression he most resented--the reflection of a normal person watching an abnormal one, and studying his abnormality.
"Do you know that you are raving?" she said, with quiet curiosity--"raving?"Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he touched his forehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his hand actually shook.
"Yes," he answered, panting, "but 'ware my ravings!
They mean what they say."
"You do yourself an injury when you give way to them"--steadily, even with a touch of slow significance--"a physical injury.I have noticed that more than once."He sprang to his feet again.Every drop of blood left his face.For a second he looked as if he would strike her.His arm actually flung itself out--and fell.
"You devil!" he gasped."You count on that? You she-devil!"She left her tree and stood before him.
"Listen to me," she said."You intimate that you have been laying melodramatic plots against me which will injure my good name.That is rubbish.Let us leave it at that.You threaten that you will break Rosy's heart and take her child from her, you say also that you will wound and hurt my mother to her death and do your worst to ruin an honest man----""And, by God, I will!" he raged."And you cannot stop me, if----""I do not know whether I can stop you or not, though you may be sure I will try," she interrupted him, "but that is not what I was going to say." She drew a step nearer, and there was something in the intensity of her look which fascinated and held him for a moment.She was curiously grave."Nigel, Ibelieve in certain things you do not believe in.I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them.It is not a new idea.There is an old Oriental proverb which says, `Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.' I believe also that the worst--the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think steadily--steadily--only of the best.To you that is merely superstition to be laughed at.That is a matter of opinion.
But--don't go on with this thing--DON'T GO ON WITH IT.Stop and think it over."He stared at her furiously--tried to laugh outright, and failed because the look in her eyes was so odd in its strength and stillness.
"You think you can lay some weird spell upon me," he jeered sardonically.
"No, I don't," she answered."I could not if I would.It is no affair of mine.It is your affair only--and there is nothing weird about it.Don't go on, I tell you.Think better of it."She turned about without further speech, and walked away from him with light swiftness over the marsh.Oddly enough, he did not even attempt to follow her.He felt a little weak--perhaps because a certain thing she had said had brought back to him a familiar touch of the horrors.She had the eyes of a falcon under the odd, soft shade of the extraordinary lashes.
She had seen what he thought no one but himself had realised.
Having watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, he sat down--as suddenly as before--on the mound near the tree.
"Oh, damn her!" he said, his damp forehead on his hands.
"Damn the whole universe!"
.....
When Betty and Roland reached Stornham, the wicker-work pony chaise from the vicarage stood before the stone entrance steps.The drawing-room door was open, and Mrs.Brent was standing near it saying some last words to Lady Anstruthers before leaving the house, after a visit evidently made with an object.This Betty gathered from the solemnity of her manner.
"Betty," said Lady Anstruthers, catching sight of her, "do come in for a moment."When Betty entered, both her sister and Mrs.Brent looked at her questioningly.
"You look a little pale and tired, Miss Vanderpoel," Mrs.
Brent said, rather as if in haste to be the first to speak."Ihope you are not at all unwell.We need all our strength just now.I have brought the most painful news.Malignant typhoid fever has broken out among the hop pickers on the Mount Dunstan estate.Some poor creature was evidently sickening for it when he came from London.Three people died last night."
