Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/336

328 love for her had lost the complexion of love and had assumed that of jealousy. His tenderness and gentleness toward her had been fed by hope, and when hope died they vanished. Even that reverence for her innocence and the respect for her character that he had shown was dissipated by the stormy gusts of jealousy.

Miss Trevisa was no more a help and stay to the poor girl than she had been previously. She was soured and embittered, for her ambition to be out of the house and in Othello Cottage had been frustrated. Coppinger would not let her go till he and his wife had come to more friendly terms. On her chimney-piece were two bunches of lavender, old lavender from the rectory garden of the preceding year. They had become so dry that the seeds fell out, and they no longer exhaled scent unless pressed.

Judith stood at her chimney-piece pressing her finger on the dropped seeds, and picking them up by this means to throw them into the small fire that smouldered in the grate. At first she went on listlessly picking up a seed and casting it into the fire, actuated by her innate love of order, without much thought—rather without any thought—for her mind was engaged over the letter of Oliver and his visit the previous night outside. But after a while, while thus gathering the grains of lavender, she came to associate them with her trouble, and as she thought—"Is there any escape for me, any happiness in store?"—she picked up a seed and cast it into the fire. Then she asked: "Is there any other escape for me than to die—to die and be with dear papa again, now not in S. Enodoc Rectory garden, but in the garden of Paradise?" And again she picked up and cast away a grain. Then, as she touched her finger-tip with her tongue and applied it to another lavender seed, she said: "Or must this go on—this nightmare of wretchedness, of persecution, of weariness to death without dying, for years?" And she cast away the seed shudderingly. "Or"—and again, now without touching her finger with her tongue, as though the last thought had contaminated it—"or will he finally break and subdue me, destroy me and Jamie, soul and body?" Shivering at the thought she hardly dare to touch a seed, but forced herself to do so, raised one, and hastily shook it from her.