Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/353

Rh annoyed and ashamed at being out of his usual rude health.

"It is naught," he said, "but a bilious attack, and will pass. Leave me alone."

She had been so busy all day, that she had seen little of Jamie. He had taken advantage of Captain Coppinger not being about, to give himself more license to roam than he had of late, and to go with his donkey on the cliffs. Anyhow Judith on this day did not have him hanging to her skirts. She was glad of it, for, though she loved him, he would have been an encumbrance when she was so busy.

The last thing at night she did was to go to Coppinger to inquire what he would take. He desired nothing but spirits and milk. He thought that a milk-punch would give him ease and make him sleep. That he was weak and had suffered pain she saw, and she was full of pity for him. But this she did not like to exhibit, partly because he might misunderstand her feelings, and partly because he seemed irritated at being unwell, and at loss of power; irritated, at all events, at it being observed that he was not in his usual plenitude of strength and health.

That night the Atlantic was troubled, and the wind carried the billows against the cliffs in a succession of rhythmic roars that filled the air with sound and made the earth quiver. Judith could not sleep, she listened to the thud of the water-heaps flung against the rocks; there was a clock on the stairs and in her wakefulness she listened to the tick of the clock, and the boom of the waves, now coming together, then one behind the other, now the wave-beat catching up the clock-tick, then falling in arrear, the ocean getting angry and making up its pace by a double beat. Moreover flakes of foam were carried on the wind and came, like snow, against her window that looked seaward striking the glass and adhering to it.

As Judith lay watchful in the night her mind again recurred to the packet of arsenic that had been abstracted from her workbox. It was inconsiderate of her to have left it there; she ought to have locked her box. But who could have supposed that anyone would have gone to the box, raised the tray and searched the contents of the compartment beneath? Judith had been unaccustomed to lock up anything, because she had never had