“Gone!” gasped the Rector. “Gone! Where? Are you mad?”
“Mad? no, papa, but she is. Oh, Harry! I saw that dreadful man to-night outside in the garden, after we had gone to bed; but I thought she would be safe; and now I know it—I am quite sure. Oh, Harry, Harry! what shall we do? He has taken her away!”
Part 2, Chapter XV.
The Bird and the Serpent.
Unmistakably. There could be no doubt of the fact; Julia Mallow had fled from her home that night—half willingly, half forced, always drawn as it were by the strange influence that the man who had been the evil genius of her life had exercised over her.
For months past she had fought against it, and striven to nerve herself to conquer the force that seemed to master her; but always in vain. For often, unseen except by her, Jock Morrison was on the watch, turning up where least expected; and when not present in the flesh, seemingly always there in spirit, and haunting her like her shadow. Again and again he had come upon her alone, taken her in his arms, and in his coarse fashion told her that he loved her, and that she should belong to him alone. Nothing, he told her, should keep them apart, for if he could not get her by fair means he would by foul; laughingly showing her the great spring-bladed dagger-knife he carried, and saying that he kept it sharp for any one who got in his way.
Julia trembled at the thought of seeing him; she shuddered and closed her eyes when he appeared before her, and then grew nerveless and weak, fascinated, as it were, like some bird before a serpent; and the scoundrel knew it. He felt the power of his words, and he repeated them to his shivering victim, glorying the while in the power he felt that he exercised over her.
Sometimes she had fancied that she was mastering her fear, but as she overcame that dread, she found, to her horror, that there was another occult influence at work which refused to be overcome; for as in the solitude of her own chamber she strove with it, she found that she was only riveting her chains more stoutly. It was not love for him. No, that was impossible; for she shuddered and shrank from him as from some monster. But, to her horror, she found that her feelings towards the great overmastering ruffian were something near akin. The thoughts of his great muscular figure, his bold bearing, and brown picturesque face were always before her; and even when her own were closed, his fierce black piercing eyes were fixed upon hers, reading her weakness, insisting upon his mastery over her more powerfully even than his words, though they were burned into her memory; and at last, after fighting with all her mind against the current of what she felt to be her fate, she had begun to drift.