Then Joan leaped to her feet as if she had been struck in the face. She kicked the nets from her and strode to the open door in a flaming passion.
“Aw, then!” she cried, “not your mother, thank God! Not your mother, or you’d be in the boats making your awn living. You! you cruel, cowardly, lazy, lounging, bad lot! Living on my poor little girl, you be! You vampire! Living on her body and soul.”
“Madam, where is Mr. Penelles?”
“Aw, to be sure. Well you knew he wasn’ here, or you would never have put foot this road. And no madam I be, but honest Joan Penelles. Go! The Pender men are near by. Go!––and the Trefy 198 men, and Jack Penhelick, and Reuben Trewillow. Go!––they are close by, I tell you. Go!––if I call they’ll come. Go!––or they will know the reason why!”
Then, still smiling and knocking the end of his cigar against the end of his cane, Roland leisurely took the road to the cliff. But Joan, in her passionate sense of intolerable wrong, flung up her arms toward heaven, and with tears and sobs her cry went up:
“O my God! Look down and see what sin this Roland Tresham be doing!”