Jude laughed cruelly.
"With my eyes opened," he snarled—"It pays to seem asleep, when you want to catch on to some kind of doings. Your old man, Joyce, ain't half the fool you'd like him to be. I wasn't napping when Billy Falster blabbed his warning. I wasn't napping when I saw that hand-holding and kissing from the top of Beacon Hill. I wasn't snoozing that night when you went crawling to Gaston's shack just after you'd given your word to me, and"—Jude had worked himself into a quivering rage—"I wasn't sleeping when you and him sat there to-night, blast ye!"
The convincing knowledge broke upon Joyce with full force. She would never be able to ignore the fact again. Try as she might, dream as she could, she was but a St. Angé woman, and he a St. Angé man.
There was only one way. She must deal with the rudest of materials.
"Jude," she said slowly, "you pay Mr. Gaston back all that you owe him—I'll stint here in the house—and I'll promise never to speak to him again. Could anything be fairer than that?"
She was in deadly earnest; but Jude laughed in her face.
A fear grew in the girl's heart at the sound. Not even an appeal to his selfishness could move him. She had lost the poor little power she once possessed. He did not care! And when that happened with a man like Jude—well, there was reason for fear.
"I'm the boss, girl, and you better hold to that knowledge. Keep your books, your pictures and what not as long as I say you can, and let that do you for what I am getting out of it. See?"
"Yes—I see!" And so she did, poor girl; and it was a long barren stretch on ahead that she saw. A stretch with hideous possibilities, unless luck were with her.
"Don't you let on." Jude was striding toward the bedchamber beyond. "I guess you're smart enough to hold your tongue, though. Pile on a log or two, before you turn in; and you better draw the shutters to the north window—it's getting splitting cold."