“Very well. Just as you like, I always look after number one first, and I’ll be hanged if I have anything more to do with you.”
Maud laughed hysterically as she sat down upon the step, and still kept a clutch upon the iron rail.
“Foiled! Foiled!” she exclaimed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Tell him it is in vain. He may hunt me, but it is written in the book of the Eternal, that Britton, the savage smith of Learmont, is to die before I. Go—go. Ha! Ha! Ha! You will never wash the blood stains out. Never—never—never!”
The man made no answer, but walked away at a very rapid pace, no doubt for the purpose of procuring some assistance; for he was an officer who had been ordered by Sir Francis Hartleton to seek for the poor deserted creature, and bring her to him, when he would take measures for placing her in some asylum where she would be free from any violence on the part of Andrew Britton, should he accidentally meet with her.
Maud continued to mutter in a low tone after the man had left, but Gray could not closely distinguish what she said, and he remained for some time perfectly quiet, resolving in his mind what he should do. As he communed with himself the deadly spirit of revenge against all whom he imagined to be in any way accessary to producing his present destitute state came over him, and he ground his teeth as he muttered,—
“I could kill them all. I could exult in their agonies. I will, I must have revenge. This hag was the cursed cause of all the horrors I have been compelled to wade through, and shall I now suffer her to escape, now that she is in my power?”
He cast a rapid glance up and down the street as he added,—
“And no one by. Oh? That I had some weapon that silently and surely would do its work, and leave her here a corpse. She shall be one offered on the altar of my revenge! I must, I will work the destruction of them all, and she will be the—the first.”
A deathly languor came over Jacob Gray even as he spoke, and he groaned audibly.
Maud started at the sound, and turning she fixed her eyes upon his dusky form as it lay hid in the shadow of the doorway, from which, for more than a minute his extreme weakness would not permit him to move.