Thus speaking, she carefully packed up the parcel once more, and secured it about her person.
“And you will not leave me a guinea—a single guinea?” asked Torrent, in a low, hollow voice—his entire aspect indicating that he was almost stupified by the merciless cupidity of his wife.
“Not a single guinea,” she replied. “The only consolation I can afford you is the assurance that your secret is safe with me. If you are ever sent to the scaffold—it will not be through my instrumentality.”
With these words, she retreated towards the door, walking backwards, so as to keep her eyes fixed upon Torrens the whole time, and thus be prepared for a sudden attack should he meditate mischief, or, in an ungovernable paroxysm of rage and despair, attempt it.
But the old man moved not from his seat, although he appeared to reel and sway unsteadily backward and forward in his chair; and at the moment when Mrs. Mortimer placed her hand on the latch, he fell heavily upon the floor.
She was about to depart when it struck her that, if he were dead, unpleasant suspicions might attach themselves to her, should she hurry away without raising any alarm; and she accordingly hastened towards him. He was senseless—but the spark of life was not extinct; and now through fear did the woman perform those duties to which she never could have been otherwise urged in respect to him. She raised him in her arms—she placed him on the bed—removed his neckcloth—and sprinkled water upon his face. In a few minutes he began to revive, and his eyes opened slowly.
“Where am I?—is it a dream?” he murmured in a faint tone: then, as his recollection returned with speed and vividness, and he knew the countenance that was bending over him, and remembered why the woman herself was there, he exclaimed, “Fiend! give me back my gold!”
“Never!” was the emphatic word that fell upon his ear in reply—and in another moment he was alone.
No—not alone: for Despair was now his companion.
And Despair is an appalling guest:—for, murderer as the man was, he had some kind of worldly consolation left in his treasure until the implacable woman wrested it from him. But now that only solace was gone—and he was left to the horror of his thoughts, and to the ghost of his victim. Beggary was before him—beggary, with all its hideous train of evils, and those evils rendered the more terrible because beyond loomed the black and ominous gibbet!