Therefore, in the lonely street to which a cab had brought her from the shop where her carriage waited, and which they paced to and fro, this strangely-assorted pair, he gave vent to his feelings, and broke out in a paroxysm that roused all his listener's feelings of anger, resistance, and disgust. She had just offered him so large a sum of money to quit England for ever, as even Jim, for whom, you must remember, every sovereign represented twenty shillings' worth of beer, could not refuse without a qualm. He hesitated, and Maud's face brightened with a ray of hope that quivered in her eyes like sunlight. "To sail next week," said he slowly; "to take my last look of ye to-day. Them's the articles. My last look. Standing there in the daylight--a real lady! And never to come back no more!"
She clasped her hands--the delicate gloved hands, with their heavy bracelets at the wrists--and her voice shook while she spoke. "You'll go; won't you? It will make your fortune; and--and--I'll always think of you kindly--and--gratefully. I will indeed; so long as you keep away."
He sprang like a horse to the lash. "It's h----ll!" he exclaimed. "Put back your cursed money. I won't do it!"
"You won't do it?"
There was such quiet despair in her accents as drove him to fury.
"I won't do it!" he repeated in a low voice that frightened her. "I'll rot in a gaol first!--I'll swing on a gallows!--I'll die in a ditch! Take care as you don't give me something to swing for! Yes, you, with your pale face, and your high-handed ways, and your cold, cruel heart that can send a poor devil to the other end o' the earth with a 'pleasant trip, and here's your health, my lad,' like as if I was goin' across to Lambeth. And yet you stand there as beautiful as a hangel; and I--I'm a fool, I am! And--and I don't know what keeps me from slippin' my knife into that white throat o' yourn, except it is as you don't look not a morsel dashed, nor skeared, you don't; no more than you was that first night as ever I see your face. And I wish my eyes had been lime-blinded first, and I'd been dead and rotting in my grave."
With anything like a contest, as usual, Maud's courage came back.
"I am not in your power yet," said she, raising her haughty head. "There stands the cab. When we reach it I get in, and you shall never have a chance of speaking to me after to-day. Once for all. Will you take this money, or leave it? I shall not make the offer again."
He took the notes from her hand, with a horrible oath, and dashed them on the ground; then growing so pale she thought he must have fallen, seemed to recover his temper and his presence of mind, picked them up, returned them very quietly, and stood aside on the narrow pavement to let her pass.
"You are right," said he, in a voice so changed, she looked anxiously in his white face, working like that of a man in a fit. "I was a fool a while ago. I know better now. But I won't take the notes, my lady. Thank ye kindly just the same. I'll wish ye good-mornin' now. O, no! Make yourself easy. I'll never ask to see ye again."