She waded ashore almost too weary to stand, and had to cling to the rough rocks till she recovered her breath. Then, slowly and heavily, she dragged herself up the lower ledges to the little plateau where her clothes were.
Julie had sat revolving grim schemes in that black head of hers.
She hated the girl. She hated Gard. She hated Sark and every one in it. Why had she ever come into these outer wilds? She would have done with it all and get away back to the life that was more to her taste.
But first—yes, mon Dieu, she would leave them something to remember her by.
She had not a doubt that Gard was still on L'Etat. Nothing else would take this girl across there. The shameless hussy!—to go swimming across to see her man with nothing but a white shift on!
She could wound Gard through Nance. She could wound Nance through Gard.
She could wait for the girl as she came up the side of the Head, and push her down again or crush her with a lump of rock.
But that might mean reprisals on the part of the Islanders. She had had experience of the way in which they resented any ill done to one of their number by an outsider. She had no wish to join Gard on his rock.
It would be better to hold the girl up to the scorn and contempt of the neighbours; that would punish her. And by setting the men on Gard's track again, that would punish him and her too.
And so she restrained the natural violence of her temper, which would have run to rocks and bodily injury, and waited in the bracken till Nance came stumbling along in the half-light. Then up she sprang, with an unexpectedness that for the moment took Nance's breath and set her heart pounding with dreadful certainties of ghosts.