walked to a side-table, unlocked a desk, and from the drawer took out four crisp new bank-notes.
Jane Glyne, maid-of-all-work at the Dingle, a place two miles from everywhere, as she said, and at which she was sure no decent servant would stop, held out her crooked fingers for the money, but Mrs Riversley placed the hand containing the notes behind her.
“One word first,” she said firmly. “I have agreed in every respect to the hard terms you have made.”
“Well, if you call them hard terms” – began the woman in an insolent tone.
“Silence!” exclaimed Mrs Riversley, “and listen to me.”
She spoke in a low deep voice, full of emotion, and the low-bred woman quailed before her as she went on.
“I say I have come to your terms that you have imposed upon me.”
“I never imposed upon you,” began Jane.
“Silence, woman!” cried Mrs Riversley, stamping her foot imperiously. “I have agreed to all you wished, but I must have my conditions too. You have that unfortunate babe.”
“Your grandson,” said the woman in a low voice, but Mrs Riversley did not heed her.
“Bring it up as you will, or trust it to whom you will, but from this hour it must be dead to us. I shall give you the money in my hand, and I will do more. This is June. From now every half year fifteen pounds shall be ready at an address in London that I will give you. To such a woman as you that should be a goodly sum, but my conditions are that within an hour you shall have made up a bundle of the best of your things, and left this place, never to return. If you ever molest us by letter or visit, the money will be stopped.”
“And suppose I tell everybody about it?” said the woman insolently.
“It is no criminal proceeding that I am aware of,” said Mrs Riversley coldly; “but you will not do that; you value the money too much. Do you agree to my terms?”
“But my box,” said the woman. “I can’t carry away half my things.”
“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,
