“It—it’s not me, Miss Vance,” declared Mr. Bodwin; “it’s you; you’re frightening it by rattling that bell and slipping off the step so often, and it simply won’t stand still!”
“Oh! it won’t, eh? Thinks it can play tricks on me like every one else this evening, does it? I’ll show it—the beast!”
Her temper was up now in real earnest.
She lurched away from the side of the vehicle after still another futile effort to keep her foothold upon the step, and by the time the two men divined her intention she was halfway to the horse’s head.
“Stop!” screeched out Mr. Milton Dante.
“Miss Vance, for Heaven’s sake!” began Mr. Bodwin; but both cries fell upon deaf ears.
Blind with rage and maddened with drink, she rushed at the horse’s head, caught at the bridle with one hand, and with the other struck it full in the face.
“Defy me, will you, you beast?” she began, and then—spoke never again!
The reins that Mr. Bodwin was holding slackened suddenly and curved in a loop between his knees for one instant before they drew taut again; the horse reared in terror, an awful figure in the dark of the night, over the small slight shape which for two seconds stood erect in the pathway, then came a thud of descending hoofs and a little bleat of agony, and in the winking of an eye men and vehicle were being whirled off through the darkness by a runaway horse, and all that was mortal of the woman whose loveliness had charmed all Crumplesea to-night lay huddled up in the dust with one arm twisted under it and its skull crushed in like an eggshell.