Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/61

Rh "You hear her?" laughed Coppinger, bitterly. "A little chit like that to speak to me thus"—then, turning sharply on her, "Are you not afraid?"

"No, I am not afraid; why should I be?"

"Why? Ask any one in S. Enodoc any one in Cornwall who has heard my name."

"I beg your pardon. I do not want to ask any one else in S. Enodoc, any one else in Cornwall. I ask you."

"Me? You ask me why you should be afraid of me?" He paused, drew his thick brows together till they formed a band across his forehead. "I tell you that none has ever wronged me by a blade of grass or a flock of wool but has paid for it a thousand-fold. And none has ever hurt me as you have done—none has ever dared to attempt it."

"I have said that I am sorry."

"You talk like one cold as a mermaid. I do not believe in your fearlessness. Why do you lean on the piano. There, touch the wires with the very tips of your lingers, and let me hear if they give a sound—and sound they will if you tremble."

Judith exposed some of the wires by raising the top of the piano. Then she smiled, and stood with the tips of her delicate fingers just touching the chords. Coppinger listened, so did Uncle Zachie, and not a vibration could they detect.

Presently she withdrew her hand, and said, "Is not that enough? When a girl says, 'I am sorry,' I supposed the chapter was done and the book closed."

"You have strange ideas."

"I have those in which I was brought up by the best of fathers."

Coppinger thrust his stick along the floor.

"Is it due to the ideas in which you have been brought up that you are not afraid—when you have reduced me to a wreck?"

"And you?—are you afraid of the wreck that you have made?"

The dark blood sprang into and suffused his whole face. Uncle Zachie drew back against the wall and made signs to Judith not to provoke their self-invited visitor; but she was looking steadily at the Captain, and did not observe the signals. In Coppinger's presence she felt nerved to stand on the defensive, and more, to attack. A