Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/224

 face spat on her. She struck the flat face with her fist. There was a scream.

"Ow, she's broke my nose! It's streamin' blood."

They were a wave now that submerged her. They struggled with each other that they might get near her to deliver a blow for some harm they fancied she had done them, or just because she was so strangely beautiful, and they had her at their mercy, and Mrs. Jessop had aroused the savage in them.

Mrs. Jessop had taken no hand in the attack as yet. She stood apart, her arms folded, her head on her strong neck thrust forward. Mrs. Jessop, respectable for all these years, obeying only the incalculable promptings of her fierce heart. Once more the grin was enthroned on her face, such a grin as might have stretched the lips of one of her cutthroat ancestors. Her blood danced singing through her veins. She felt and looked twenty years younger.

But she did not want her girls to go too far. She did not want her victim to be seriously hurt or rendered unconscious. She raised her voice and shouted to the little mob that moved here and there in the dusk of the copse like a strange animal in pain:

"Easy there, girls! No more now—take her into the open—down to the lagoon. I'm going to duck her!"

They did not seem to hear but they must have heard, for very soon the animal that had seemed to be in pain in the copse writhed out into the field, and down to the water's edge, as though it would end its suffering there.

Lovering was leaning against the bar, sipping a glass of whisky and water, with a feeling of deep content. He