Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/36

32 dog's-eared cards one by one in his white hands with a slow deliberate touch that never faltered.

The woman looked at him with a piteous but tearless glance; from him to the river; and back again to him.

"You don't ask to look at the child, Jabez."

"I don't like children," said he. "I get enough of children at the Doctor's. Children and Latin grammar—and the end so far off yet,"—he said the last words to himself, in a gloomy tone.

"But your own child, Jabez—your own."

"As you say," he muttered.

She rose from her chair and looked full at him—a long long gaze which seemed to say, "And this is the man I loved; this is the man for whom I am lost!" If he could have seen her look! But he was stooping to pick up a card from the ground—his house of cards was five stories high by this time. "Come," he said, in a hard resolute tone, "you've written to me to beg me to meet you here, for you were dying of a broken heart; that's to say you have taken to drinking gin (I dare say it's an excellent thing to nurse a child upon), and you want to be bought off. How much do you expect? I thought to have a sum of money at my command to-day. Never you mind how; it's no business of yours." He said this savagely, as if in answer to a look of inquiry from her; but she was standing with her back turned to him, looking steadily out of the window.

"I thought to have been richer to-day," he continued, "but I've had a disappointment. However, I've brought as much as I could afford; so the best thing you can do is to take it, and get out of Slopperton as soon as you can, so that I may never see your wretched white face again."

He counted out four sovereigns on the sticky table, and then, adding the sixth story to his card-house, looked at the frail erection with a glance of triumph.

"And so will I build my fortune in days to come," he muttered.

A man who had entered the dark little parlour very softly passed behind him and brushed against his shoulder at this moment; the house of cards shivered, and fell in a heap on the table.

Jabez turned round with an angry look.

"What the devil did you do that for?" he asked.

The man gave an apologetic shrug, pointed with his fingers to his lips, and shook his head.

"Oh," said Jabez, "deaf and dumb! So much the better."

The strange man seated himself at another table, on which