“My mouth is parched for want of a drop of water!”
“And weak?”
“So weak that it troubles me to move a finger, except when I’m angry. Peg gave me a moment’s strength, and your coming kept it up—but now I am helpless.”
“Yet you are rich?”
“Oh, yes, very rich; rolling in gold—rolling in gold!” cried the old woman, with a fresh gleam of the eyes.
“And where is this gold? I want my share of it.”
“Your share, oh, ha! you’re joking now, my beautiful friend. Of course, one never keeps money in a place like this! Safe in the bank, mortgages, railroad stock, bonds.”
“And jewels perhaps—old-fashioned diamond ear-rings, mated this time,” said Jane Kelly, glancing under the bed, at which Madame De Marke grew more livid than sickness had left her, and began to writhe upon her pillow as if seized with a sudden paroxysm of pain.
“No, no,” the invalid almost shrieked, “the judge kept them both. I never could get those ear-rings back from his clutches. They were to be kept for you, he insisted, when you came out of prison. I only wish we had them here, and they should sparkle in those pretty ears before you could find time to ask for them.”
Jane gave her head a contemptuous toss, but the eyes of the old woman were fixed upon her with that keen, mesmeric power which in serpents is called fascination; and spite of her coarse shrewdness, the material of the one woman was yielding itself to the diabolical subtlety of the other.