"I know he didn't care a straw for me"—she gasped, dabbing her temples with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne—"yet it seemed sometimes almost as if he did: he was so attentive—but then he had such lovely manners—no doubt he was just as attentive to all girls. Oh, Mop, if he had cared for me, and if I had married him—what a paradise this earth would have been. Mr. Tregonell told me that he had quite four thousand a year."
And thus—and thus, with numerous variations on the same theme—poor Dopsy mourned for the dead man; while the low murmur of the distant sea, beating for ever and for ever against the horned cliffs, and dashing silvery white about the base of that Mechard Rock which looks like a couchant lion keeping guard over the shore, sounded like a funeral chorus in the pauses of her talk.
It was half-past ten when Christabel left her boy's bedside, and, on her way to her own room, suddenly remembered Jessie's unexplained absence.
She knocked at Miss Bridgeman's door twice, but there was no answer, and then she opened the door and looked in, expecting to find the room empty.
Jessie was sitting in front of the fire in her hat and jacket, staring at the burning coals. There was no light in the room, except the glow and flame of the fire, but even in that cheerful light Jessie looked deadly pale. "Jessie," exclaimed Christabel, going up to her and putting a gentle hand upon her shoulder, for she took no notice of the opening of the door, "where in heaven's name have you been?"
"Where should I have been? Surely you can guess! I have been to see him."
"To the farm—alone—at night?"
"Alone—at night—yes! I would have walked through storm and fire—I would have walked through——" she set her lips like iron, and muttered through her clenched teeth, "Hell."
"Jessie, Jessie, how foolish! What good could it do?"
"None to him, I know, but perhaps a little to me. I think if I had stayed here I should have gone stark, staring mad. I felt my brain reeling as I sat and thought of him in the twilight, and then it seemed to me as if the only comfort possible was in looking at his dead face—holding his dead hand—and I have done it, and am comforted—a little," she said, with a laugh, which ended in a convulsive sob.