Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/172

170 "Tell them," he said. "I'll guarantee they're no worse than some we have heard from you to-night."

"Keep that you-be-damned nature of yours quiet, Heriot," advised Brodribb; and Ducane laughed again.

"It's the women can tell most, I guess. Maybe my wife"

"Yes?" Dick's hands shut with a sudden jerk. "Your wife?"

"She's lucky to have a husband who knows enough to look after her," sneered Ducane.

With a sharp curse Dick sprang up, and Lowndes caught at his leg.

"Steady, Heriot; the man's drunk," he cried.

"I'm not going to touch him; " Dick kicked himself free. "I have neither gloves nor boots on."

He swung down the beach into the dark, and Ducane looked after him in tipsy triumph. He had made Jennifer's task easier for her, and he had satisfied his own evil temper in the doing of it. He rolled over with a grunt, and thrust out his granite cup.

"Give me another drink, somebody," he said.

Dick went down the beach with face white and bitten lips. Insults to himself never troubled him, but this insult to Jennifer cut deep. And the truth of it stung.

Where the beach lay up to the forehead of the dark wood the factor's house showed, low and pale, palely, and there was something white beyond it which took the shape of a woman as Dick came near. He knew it at once. Jennifer had found the night too hot for sleep, and she had come out to look, like Beatrice, over the hedge of her innocence at those Dante-fires along the distance. Dick had kept himself apart from her since that night on the steamer deck, fifty hours ago. He had hurt her enough for the present, and her white face and strained eyes told it. By and by he would speak, and she would listen. But all that was good in him repented that he had done this when there was no escape for her from either Ducane or himself, and he trod past her now with head a little away and down, and a silent, suddenly-awkward salute. And at that moment he was near to the kingdom of heaven because of the reverence in him.