"Bart, I didn't! I didn't!" she whispered, hoarsely. "Tell him I wouldn't--I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't true!"
Bart's face puckered up, and he looked tenderly down in the agitated face before him.
"Well, lass," he said, softly, "I believe--"
"That you turned against us!" interposed Abel, savagely, for his temper, consequent upon the way matters had gone against him, was all on edge.
"Come on, Bart; she'll have her own way now."
A constable's hand was on each of their shoulders, and they were hurried out of court, leaving Mary standing frowning alone, the observed of all.
Her handsome face flushed, and she drew herself up proudly, as she cast a haughtily defiant look at all around, and was about to walk away when her eyes lighted upon the captain, who was seated by the magisterial bench, side by side with his richly-dressed lady.
There was a vindictive glare in Mary Dell's eyes as she encountered the gaze of Mistress Armstrong, the lady looking upon her as a strange, dangerous kind of creature.
"Why should she not suffer as I suffer?" thought Mary. "Poor, weak, dressed-up doll that she is! I could sting her to the heart easy. How I hate her, for she has robbed me of a husband!"
But the next moment the lady withdrew her gaze with a shiver of dread from the eyes which had seemed to scorch her; and Mary's now lit upon those of Captain Armstrong, for he was watching her curiously, and with re-awakened interest.
Mary's face changed again its expression, as light seemed to enter her darkened soul.
"He used to love me a little. He would not be so cruel as that. I offended him, because I was so hard and--cruel he called it. He would listen to me now. I will, I will."
She gazed at him fixedly for a moment, and then hurried from the court.
"What a dreadful-looking woman, Jemmy!" whispered Mistress Armstrong.
"She quite made me shudder. Will they hang her too?"
"No, no," he said, rising quickly and drawing a long breath. Then, recollecting himself, he sat down again as if in pain, and held out his hand to his wife, who supported him to the carriage, into which he ascended slowly.
"Sorry for you, Armstrong; deuced sorry, egad," said the senior magistrate, coming up to the carriage door. "Can't help feeling glad too."
"Oh, Sir Timothy!" cried Mistress Armstrong, who was a seventeenth cousin.
"But I am, my dear," said the old magistrate. "Glad, because it will rid us of a couple of dreadful rascals. Trial comes on in three weeks.
I wouldn't get well too soon. Judge Bentham will hang them as sure as they're alive."
He nodded and walked off, with his cocked hat well balanced on his periwig. Then the heavy lumbering carriage drove out of the quaint old town, with the big dumpling horses perspiring up the hills; while, as soon as they were away from the houses, Mistress Armstrong leaned back on the cushions with a sigh of relief.
"I do hope the judge will hang them," she said. "A pair of wicked, bad, cruel ruffians, to beat and half-kill my own dear darling Jemmy as they did. Oh, the cruel, cruel creatures! I could hang them myself! Does it hurt you anywhere now, my own sweetest boy?" she added, softly, as she passed her arm caressingly round her liege lord, who gave such a savage start that she shrank into the other corner of the carriage, with the tears starting to her eyes.
"Don't be such a confounded fool!" her "sweetest" Jemmy roared; and then he sat back scowling, for she had interrupted a sort of day-dream in which he was indulging respecting Mary Dell, whose eyes still seemed to be fixed upon his; and as his wife's last words fell upon his ear they came just as he was wondering whether, if they met again, Mary would, in her unprotected state, prove more kind, and not so prudish as of yore.
The honeymoon had been over some time.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
MARY BEGINS TO PLAN.
Mary Dell was a girl of keen wits, but her education was of the sea-shore. Among her class people talked of the great folk, and men of wealth and their power--and not without excuse--for in those days bribery, corruption, and class clannishness often carried their way to the overruling of justice--the blind; and in her ignorance she thought that if she could win over Captain Armstrong to forgive her brother, the prosecution would be at an end, and all would be well.
Consequently she determined to go up to the big house by Slapton Lea, and beg Mistress Armstrong to intercede with her husband, and ask his forgiveness; so one morning soon after the committal she set off, but met the carriage with the young married couple inside--Mistress Armstrong looking piqued and pale, and the captain as if nothing were the matter.
The sight of the young wife side by side with the man who had professed to love her was too much for Mary, and she turned off the road and descended by the face of a dangerously steep cliff to the shingly shore; where, as she tramped homeward, with her feet sinking deeply in the small loose pebbles, her feeling of bitterness increased, and she felt that it would be impossible to ask that weak, foolish-looking woman with the doll's face to take her part.
No; she would go up to the house boldly and ask to see the captain himself; and then, with the memory of his old love for her to help her cause, he would listen to her prayer, and save her brother from the risk he ran.
Then a mental cloud came over her, and she felt that she could not go up to the big house. It was not the captain's, it was _her_ mother's; and it would be like going to ask a favour of her. She could not do it; and there was no need.
Captain Armstrong would come down to the shore any evening if she sent him the old signal, a scrap of dry sea-weed wrapped in paper. Scores of times she had done this when Abel had gone to sea in his boat, with Bart for companion; and Mary's cheeks flushed at the recollection of those meetings.
Yes; she would send him the old signal by one of the fishermen's children.
No; only if all other means failed. He was better now, and would be about. She would watch for him, and, as she called it, meet him by accident, and then plead her cause.
And so a week glided away, and there was only about one more before the judge would arrive, and Abel and his companion be brought up in the assize court. Mary had haunted every road and lane leading toward the big house, and had met the captain riding and walking, but always with Mistress Armstrong, and she could not speak before her.
There was nothing for it but to take the bold step, and after long hesitation that step was taken; the piece of sea-weed was wrapped up in paper, entrusted to a little messenger, and that evening Mary Dell left the cottage and walked round the western point towards Torcross, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unusually bright, and her heart full of care.
She was not long in reaching the well-known spot--their old trysting-place, where the coarse sand was white, and the rocks which shut in the retired tiny cove rough with limpet, barnacle, and weed.
This was the first time she had been there since James Armstrong had wearied of the prude, as he called her, and jilted her for his wealthy wife; and now the question arose; Would he come?
The evening was glorious; but one thought filled Mary's breast--Abel shut up behind the prison bars, still obdurate, and believing her false to him, and his faithful friend.
The grey look on the face of the sea was reflected upon that of the watcher; and as the sky grew dark, so grew Mary Dell's eyes, only that there was a lurid light now and then glowing in their depths.
"He will not come," she said. "He hates me now as I hate him, and--"
She stopped short, for her well-trained ear caught the sound of a pebble falling as if from a height upon the strand below, and gazing fixedly above the direction of the sound, she made out something dark moving high up on the cliff track.
Mary's heart began to beat wildly, and she drew a long breath; but she would not let hope carry her away for a few moments till she could be certain, and then a faint cry of joy escaped her, but only to be succeeded by a chilling sensation, as something seemed to ask her why he had come.
"I'm late," cried a well-known voice directly after. "Why, Mary, just in the old spot. It's like old times. My darling!" He tried to clasp her in his arms, his manner displaying no trace of his injuries; but she thrust him sharply away, half surprised and yet not surprised, for she seemed now to read the man's character to the full.
"Captain Armstrong!" she cried, hoarsely.
"Why, my dear Mary, don't be so prudish. You are not going to carry on that old folly?"
"Captain Armstrong, don't mistake me."
"Mistake you! No. You are the dearest, loveliest woman I ever saw.
There, don't be huffed because I was so long. I couldn't get away. You know--" and he again tried to seize her.
"Captain Armstrong--"
"Now, what nonsense! You sent for me, and I have come."