A board fence was beside the road; she clung to it and shivered with the old, half-forgotten terror.
"There was something else you were to tell me," she said at last. He told her briefly the incident of the dropped paper, and concluded: "It's no concern of mine, or yours, unless you're interested in this girl, who appears to be the singularly efficient motive, of the state of whose affections I am not informed. One of the last things that Windham said to me was to tell you about it and tell you to save the girl, meaning, I take it, with more precision of phrase, that you are to shunt Map into the ditch, which you evidently can do if you want to. No doubt, it will be my matrimonial duty to help, though the ethical side of matrimony you wouldn't expect to appeal to me. No more it does. Is there any side that appeals to you? What are you afraid of?"—with sudden savageness—"of me? Keep your disgust to yourself, then, till I'm gone. I'll get Map strung up if you like, or shot, or blotted out by persuasion. Windham's probably dead, and doesn't care. Map's a damned scoundrel like me, and a deal more concentrated. As for—"
Rachel caught his arm and stared up at him:
"Gard! What do you mean?"
And Mavering laughed.
"Gard, is it? This little melodrama is well done. Exit John Mavering into the jaws of hell. What comes next? My pearl of a wife, my gentle and frightened dove, will you kindly state what you are up to?"
"It's Helen—"
"Helen! Helen, avaunt! I'm done."
"Oh, Jack, it all depends on him! Don't you see?"
"I see you care much for Windham, and perhaps yon girl with the yellow hair, and have a sensitive dislike for me. Gods! she's pretty, yon girl, but she ought to be fatter. I don't know whether Windham's dead or not, but he looked like a consumptive plaster-cast when I saw him—been ploughed and harrowed by a shell and made ready to be planted for immortality, I inferred, but didn't inquire. What do I care for him or the said girl who is pretty but should be fatter? What do I care for you? I don't know. But if you propose matrimony for the two, I'll go so far in friendship as to tell him he'd much better be planted. Am I such slime to your cultured taste? Say so, then, and, by God! you've seen the last of me."