She shrank away from him in quivering disgust. "Oh, never, never!" she said.
The words rushed out almost against her will, and the moment they were uttered she wished them back. For Jake's eyes leapt into sudden furious flame, such flame as seemed to scorch her from head to foot. He did not speak at once, but stood looking at her, looking at her, while the awful seconds crept away.
At last, "It's rather--rash of you to put it that way," he said, and there was a faintly humorous sound in his voice as though he restrained a laugh. "So you're not--a woman of your word after all? That's queer--damn' queer. I could have sworn you were."
She wrung her hands hard together in a desperate effort at self-control. "Oh, Jake," she said piteously, "it isn't my fault that we're not made of the same stuff, indeed--indeed! You--you wouldn't ask the impossible of me!"
"P'raps not," said Jake, and now he spoke in the old soft drawl that she knew well as a cloak to unwavering determination. "But has it never occurred to you that I might leave asking and just--take?"
She recoiled further from him. The man's deadly assurance appalled her. She had no weapon to oppose against it. And his eyes were as a red-hot furnace into which she dared not look.
"Now, listen to me!" he suddenly said. "There's been enough of this fooling around--more than enough. I've put up with it so far, but there's a limit to everything. The time has come for you to remember that you are my wife, I am your husband. We may not be over well suited to one another, as you have pointed out. But the bond exists and we have got to make the best of it. And so you will not go back to the Castle to-night. You will stay here under your husband's roof, and fill your rightful place by my side. Is that understood?"
He spoke with the utmost decision; and Maud, white to the lips, attempted no reply. She had made her appeal, and he had not heard it. She knew with sure intuition that further resistance would be useless. She had staked all, and she had lost. In that moment she saw her life a heap of ruins, blasted by a devastating tempest that had scattered to the four winds all that she had ever held precious. And nothing was left to her. Nothing of value could ever be hers again. Only out of the smoking ruins there presently arose one thing--a poison plant--that was to flourish in the midst of desolation. Out of the furnace of a man's unshackled passion it sprang to full growth in a single night ready to bear its evil fruit when time should have made it ripe.
The seed of it had been sown by Saltash. The tropical raising of it was the work of Jake Bolton. The nourishing of it was left to Maud. But the final ingathering of that bitter harvest was to fall to the lot of all three.
PART II