Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/35

Rh She did not finish this sentence, but sat looking with a dull vacant stare at the black waters of the Sloshy, which, as the tide rose, washed with a hollow noise against the brickwork of the pathway close to the window.

"Well, as I suppose you didn't ask me to meet you here for the sole purpose of making miserable speeches, perhaps you'll tell me what you want with me. My time is precious, and if it were not, I can't say I should much care about stopping long in this place; it's such a deliciously lively hole and such a charming neighbourhood."

"I live in this neighbourhood—at least, I starve in this neighbourhood, Jabez."

"Oh, now we're coming to it," said the gentleman, with a very gloomy face, "we're coming to it. You want some money. That's how this sort of thing always ends."

"I hoped a better end than that, Jabez. I hoped long ago, when I thought you loved me"

"Oh, we're going over that ground again, are we?" said he; and with a gesture of weariness, he took up the dog's-eared cards on the sticky table before him, and began to build a house with them, such as children build in their play.

Nothing could express better than this action his thorough determination not to listen to what the woman might have to say; but in spite of this she went on—

"You see I was a foolish country girl, Jabez, or I might have known better. I had been accustomed to take my father and my brother's word of mouth as Bible truth, and had never known that word to be belied. I did not think, when the man I loved with all my heart and soul—to utter forgetfulness of every other living creature on the earth, of every duty that I knew to man and heaven—I did not think when the man I loved so much said this or that, to ask him if he meant it honestly, or if it was not a cruel and a wicked lie. Being so ignorant, I did not think of that, and I thought to be your wife, as you swore I should be, and that this helpless little one lying here might live to look up to you as a father, and be a comfort and an honour to you."

To be a comfort and an honour to you! The fretful baby awoke at the words, and clenched its tiny fists with a spiteful action.

If the river, as a thing eternal in comparison to man—if the river had been a prophet, and had had a voice in its waters wherewith to prophesy, I wonder whether it would have cried—

"A shame and a dishonour, an enemy and an avenger in the days to come!"

Jabez' card-house had risen to three stories; he took the