"How?"

The girl spoke seriously, and he could tell by her voice that her lips closed with a firm pressure when she ceased.

"It might help me about the lease."

Judith seemed to reflect a moment, then she looked up quietly, and said:

"When we are married, Richard."

"Why, child, it is only a sc.r.a.p of paper that no one but Sir Noel will ever care for."

"I know that, and sometimes wonder you are so sharp after it. My arm is all sorts of colors yet where you grasped it after that race down the banks of the lake. If the game-keeper had not come in sight, I don't know what might have chanced. Oh, Richard, your face was awful that day. It frightened me!"

"Too much, I fear, and that makes you so obstinate. I dare say that you never keep the bit of paper about you?" questioned Storms, with a dull, sinister look, which was so perceptible in the moonlight that the girl shrunk from him unconsciously.

"No," she answered. "I never keep it about me, and never shall till we are wed."

"And then?"

"I will give it to you, as you crave it so much, and in its stead take the marriage lines. If it were worth a thousand pounds, I would rather have the lines."

"A thousand pounds! Why, la.s.s, what are you thinking of? Who ever heard of giving money for a sc.r.a.p of writing like that?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Only you wanted it so much, and if you were to play me false, as people say you have done with many a sweetheart before me, it might be put to a bad use."

"But they slander me. I never yet betrayed a sweetheart," said Storms, eagerly.

"Then it is true that Ruth Jessup was the first to give you up. No, no, do not say it. No woman on earth could do that. I would rather think you false to her than not. The other I never could believe--never."

"Well, believe what you like; but do not come here again without that bit of paper. I did not fairly read it."

The suppressed eagerness in his voice aroused all the innate craft in the girl's nature. He had outdone his part, and thus enhanced the advantage that she held over him to a degree that made her determined to keep the paper. In her soul she had no trust in the man; but was willing to win him by any means that promised to be most effectual.

Still she was capable of meeting craft with deception, and did it now.

"Well, if I think of it."

Storms read the insincerity of her evasion, and seemed to cast the subject from his mind. But he felt the thraldom of this girl's power with a keenness that might have terrified her, had she comprehended it. Besides, the news she had brought to him that evening was of a kind to make him hate the bearer and intensify his thirst for vengeance on young Hurst.

CHAPTER XLIX.

BROODING THOUGHTS.

"What are you thinking of, Richard, with your eyes wandering out on the water and your mouth so set?" asked the girl, after some moments of silence that began to trouble her.

Storms started as if a shot had pa.s.sed him.

"Thinking of--Why nothing that should trouble you."

"But you don't care to talk, and me sitting by!"

"What is the difference, so long as you were in my mind? I was thinking that there might as well be an end of this. We could have the matter over, and no noise about it, you know."

Judith's heart made a great leap.

"Were you thinking of that, Richard? Oh, tell me!"

She was sitting on the floor, leaning her elbow on the bench, where Storms had flung himself with an utter disregard to her comfort. Now she leaned forward till her head rested on his bosom, and she clasped him fondly with her firm, white arms.

"Were you thinking of that now, really, darling?"

Storms did not actually push her away; but he turned over with his face to the wall, muttering:

"Don't bother. What else should it be?"

"Then I must be getting ready, you know. The mistress must have warning," said the girl, too happy for resentment.

"The mistress! There it is. You cannot expect me to take a wife from the bar-room. No, no! We must manage it in some other way."

Judith drew a deep breath.

"I will do anything you tell me--anything at all," she said. "Only let me make sure that you are as happy as I am."

"Happy! Of course I'm happy. Why not?" answered the young man. "Now, you'd better be going home. It is getting late."

Judith arose, drew her scarlet sacque closer around her, pulled the jaunty little hat over her eyes, and stood in the moonlight waiting for her lover. He arose heavily, and dropping both clasped hands between his knees, sat in the shadow, regarding her with sullen interest. She could not see his face, but there was a glitter of his eyes that pierced the shadows with sinister brightness. The picture of the girl was so vivid, framed in the old doorway, with that deep background of water over which the moonlight seemed to leap, leaving that in darkness, and herself flooded in light, so fearfully vivid, that the man whom she hoped to marry could never afterward sweep it from his brain.

"Come," she said, "I'm ready."

"And so am I," he answered, starting up and dashing his hands apart, as if a serpent had entangled them against his will. "What are you waiting for?"

"What have I been long and long waiting for?" said the girl; "but it has come at last. Oh, Richard, say that it has come at last."

"Yes, it has come at last," broke forth the man, almost savagely. "You would have it so. Remember, you would--"

"Why, how cross you are. Was it I that first made love?"

"You? Yes. It always is the woman."

"Oh, Richard, dear--how you love to torment me!"

The girl took his arm, as she said this, and held to it caressingly, with both hands, while her eyes, half-beaming, half-tearful, sought in his face some contradiction of his savage mood.

"Is the torment all on one side?" he muttered, enduring her caressing touch with surly impatience.