Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/209

Rh “All right?”

“I was afraid there wouldn’t be another woman.”

“Afraid! Women are ever so much worse than men. And she’s—awful. She says she’s the daughter of the gods.”

“A little wanting, perhaps.”

I touched my head. Apparently Miss Purvis did not catch the allusion.

“Wanting! She’s wanting in everything she ought to have. She’s—she’s not to be described. I thought she was rats.”

“You thought she was rats?”

“The house is full of them—in swarms! They’d have eaten me—picked the flesh off my bones!—if I’d given them the chance.”

I was becoming more and more persuaded that agitation had been too much for her. I had never encountered a case of a person being eaten alive by rats, except the leading one of Bishop Hatto in his rat tower on the Rhine, and that was scarcely quotable.

“Now, Miss Purvis, the kettle is just on the boil. I do beg you’ll have a cup of tea before we go any further.”

“With Pollie lying dead?”

“But is she lying dead?”

“I believe she’s eaten!”

“Eaten?—by rats?”

There was a dryness in my tone which was, perhaps, rather more significant than I had intended.

“Are you laughing at me?—Are you—laughing at me?”

She repeated her inquiry for the second time with a great sob in her voice, which made me realise what a brute I was.

“I am very far from laughing. I am only anxious that you should not make yourself ill.”

“You’re not! you’re not!” She stamped her foot