“If you are going to give us much more of this sort of thing,” said Mr. Conyers, with aggravating stolidity, “perhaps you won’t object to my lighting a cigar?”
Aurora took no notice of his quiet insolence; but Captain Prodder, involuntarily clenching his fist, bounded a step forward in his retreat, and shook the leaves of the underwood about his legs.
“What’s that?” exclaimed the trainer.
“My dog, perhaps,” answered Aurora; “he’s about here with me.”
“Curse the purblind cur!” muttered Mr. Conyers, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He struck a lucifer-match against the back of a tree, and the vivid sulphurous light shone full upon his handsome face.
“A rascal!” thought Captain Prodder;—“a good-looking, heartless scoundrel! What’s this between my niece and him? He isn’t her husband, surely, for he don’t look like a gentleman. But if he ain’t her husband, who is he?”
The sailor scratched his head in his bewilderment. His senses had been almost stupefied by Aurora’s passionate talk, and he had only a confused feeling that there was trouble and wretchedness of some kind or other around and about his niece.
“If I thought he’d done anything to injure her,” he muttered, “I’d pound him into such a jelly that his friends would never know his handsome face again as long as there was life in his carcass.”
Mr. Conyers threw away the burning match, and puffed at his newly-lighted cigar. He did not trouble himself to take it from his lips as he addressed Aurora, but spoke between his teeth, and smoked in the pauses of his discourse.
“Perhaps, if you’ve—calmed yourself down—a bit,” he said, “you’ll be so good as—to come to business. What do you want me to do?”
“You know as well as I do,” answered Aurora.
“You want me to leave this place?”
“Yes; forever.”
“And to take what you give me—and be satisfied.”
“Yes.”
“What if I refuse?”
She turned sharply upon him as he asked this question, and looked at him for a few moments in silence.
“What if I refuse?” he repeated, still smoking.
“Look to yourself!” she cried, between her set teeth; “that’s all. Look to yourself!”
“What! you’d kill me, I suppose?”
“No,” answered Aurora; “but I’d tell all; and get the release which I ought to have sought for two years ago.”
“Oh, ah, to be sure!” said Mr. Conyers; “a pleasant thing for Mr. Mellish, and our poor papa, and a nice bit of gossip for the newspapers! I’ve a good mind to put you to the test, and see if you’ve pluck enough to do it, my lady.”
She stamped her foot upon the turf, and tore the lace in her hands, throwing the fragments away from her; but she did not answer him.
“You’d like to stab me, or shoot me, or strangle me, as I stand here; wouldn’t you, now?” asked the trainer, mockingly.
“Yes,” cried Aurora, “I would!” She flung her head back with a gesture of disdain as she spoke.
“Why do I waste my time in talking to you?” she said. “My worst words can inflict no wound upon such a nature as yours. My scorn is no more painful to you than it would be to any of the loathsome creatures that creep about the margin of yonder pool.”
The trainer took his cigar from his mouth, and struck the ashes away with his little finger.
“No,” he said with a contemptuous laugh; “I’m not very thin-skinned; and I’m pretty well used to this sort of thing, into the bargain. But suppose, as I remarked just now, we drop this style of conversation, and come to business. We don’t seem to be getting on very fast this way.”
At this juncture, Captain Prodder, who, in his extreme desire to strangle his niece’s companion, had advanced very close upon the two speakers, knocked off his hat against the lower branches of the tree which sheltered him.
There was no mistake this time about the rustling of the leaves. The trainer started, and limped towards Captain Prodder’s hiding-place.
“There’s someone listening to us,” he said. “I’m sure of it this time;—that fellow Hargraves, perhaps. I fancy he’s a sneak.”
Mr. Conyers supported himself against the very tree behind which the sailor stood, and beat amongst the undergrowth with his stick, but did not succeed in encountering the legs of the listener.
“If that soft-headed fool is playing the spy upon me,” cried the trainer, savagely, “he’d better not let me catch him, for I’ll make him remember it, if I do.”
“Don’t I tell you that my dog followed me here?” exclaimed Aurora contemptuously.
A low rustling of the grass on the other side of the avenue, and at some distance from the seaman’s place of concealment, was heard as Mrs. Mellish spoke.
“That’s your dog, if you like,” said the trainer; “the other was a man. Come on a little way further, and let’s make a finish of this business; it’s past ten o’clock.”
Mr. Conyers was right. The church clock had struck ten five minutes before, but the solemn chimes had fallen unheeded upon Aurora’s ear, lost amid the angry voices raging in her breast. She started as she looked around her at the summer darkness in the woods, and the flaming yellow moon, which brooded low upon the earth, and shed no light upon the mysterious pathways and the water-pools
