"None of your—durned business."
"And Jude—don't borrow any more. I know Mr. Drew would advance anything for the building. His family is terribly rich. Mr. Gaston knows about them. I'd rather owe Mr. Drew than Mr. Gaston. Please, Jude!"
For a moment the sweet, quivering face put forth its appeal to the lower nature of the man. The girl was young enough, and new enough to sway Jude after a fashion, but the charm died almost at birth.
"See here." Jude slipped from the clinging hands, and glared angrily. "You ain't ever properly learned your place. You better let go any fool idee that you can budge me with your wiles. I don't have to buy your favours—they're mine. What I do, I do, and you take what I choose to let you have. See? If you get more than what is rightfully yours, don't get sot up with the notion I don't know what I'm permitting. I guess I've got to let you see what you're up against a little plainer. I had a kind of dim idee that your schooling and book-learning made you a bit keener than most about the real facts of the case, but you're all alike. Don't you question me in the future, girl, and you go your way—the way I let you go—and be thankful, but don't you forget you and me is man and wife, and that means just one durned thing in St. Angé and only one."
Joyce staggered back as if the man before her had dealt her a blow.
What had happened? Then she remembered that Jude was always irritable when he had been roused from sleep, or when he was hungry.
The blindness was mercifully clouding her soul now; but its duration was brief. It only gave her time to stand upright.
"Did you think I was asleep to-night?" Jude almost hissed the words.
The suddenness of the question had all the evil power of reducing the girl to an appearance of guilt.
"You were asleep," she whispered back.