“I don’t want to pick a quarrel with you, sir,” returned Purvis. “You have done me no wrong, but as to your companion, she has been the very bane of my existence. She it was, who, when I was a helpless lad, taught me to become a thief. I am not romancing. She has made me what I am. Perhaps you don’t know that she is a trainer of thieves.”
“Silence! No more of this, you audacious miscreant,” cried Gatliffe, in a violent rage.
“And you are her champion! Well I wish you a better office.”
“If you persist in annoying us, I will inflict summary chastisement on you, let the consequence be what it will.”
“I say again I have no desire to fasten a quarrel on you, Mr. Gatliffe. I believe you to be upright and honourable, but that’s no reason for your espousing the cause of one who is so utterly worthless. In the due course of time you will be convinced of the truth of all I have been saying. Take my advice—have nothing to do with that woman. Shall I tell you her early history?”
“I again request you to keep your remarks to yourself,” observed Gatliffe, who was at this time everwhelmed with astonishment at the turn the conversation had been taking.
“Well, sir,” said Purvis, “on consideration, it is doubtless neither pleasing nor palatable to you to hear the truth spoken, but I warn you to be careful in dealing with the odious woman by your side. In the earlier years of her life she was under the protection of an old gentleman, whom she robbed and afterwards poisoned. I have the whole history of this part of her career by heart—she is an adultress and a murderess. Listen to the story I have to tell.”
Alf Purvis was on the edge of the cliffs when he made these last remarks. Laura Stanbridge, who was at this time pale with ill-suppressed passion, sprang forward, and stretching out her arms, she with a tiger-like spring, rushed full at her traducer. Throwing the whole weight of her body in the sudden assault, she pushed Alf Purvis with such terrible force that he reeled and tottered for a moment, then a loud splash in the water told that the ill-fated young man had fallen over the precipice.
“Gracious heavens, what have you done?” exclaimed her companion pale as ashes and trembling in every limb. “He has fallen over.”
“And a good job too; I know how to protect myself.”