“I was yonder,” he pointed upwards with his chin, and then whisked his kerchief in the direction of the top of the cliff. “I was on the down, and when I least expected it, and at the moment when I was not thinking of him, I saw him striding towards me, and when he came up with me, he was out of breath. I was standing then at the edge of the cleave. I was looking down into the coombe at my house, and I was in a dream. When I saw him, I did not stir. I would not go to meet him. I let him come to me. And when I saw him turn out of his path and cross the down to me, then I knew the hand out of the clouds pointed the way, and he followed not knowing to what it pointed. He came close to me, to the very edge of the rock, and I did not budge one inch. He had been walking fast, and spoke pantingly, in a strangely mixed manner, and he asked some question about Giles. I do not remember what he asked, but at the sound of his voice and of that name, then the fire that was in my heart broke out, and I was blind and mad. My blood roared in my ears and head, as the sea roars and beats against the coast in a gale. Then I shouted out all I knew; I told him that Giles was his son, and that God would call him to account for his sins and his injustice and cruelties; and he was as one amazed, that neither spoke nor moved till I raised my hand to strike him on the breast to rouse him to answer, and then, before ever I touched him, he stepped back and went over the cleave.”
Then Marianne Saltren uttered a piercing shriek and tossed, and put her teeth to her husband’s hand to bite at the fingers and force them to relax their grasp.
“There are people coming,” she screamed, “I will tell them all that you killed him. Let me go. I cannot bear your touch.”
“You accursed woman, you daughter of the old father of lies,” said Saltren between his teeth, and the bubbles formed in his mouth as he spoke through his teeth, “I will not let you go till you have told me who was the father of Giles.”
Suddenly, however, he let go her wrist, but she had her liberty for a moment only. He had drawn his black silk neckerchief round her throat, and twisted the ends about his fingers under her chin.
“Marianne, I killed him. Yet not I. I am but the executioner under Providence. What heaven judges that I carry out. And now I do not care if I kill you, after I killed him. I will kill you, I will strangle you, unless you confess who was the father of Giles.”
He was capable of doing what he threatened.
“It were best for you,” he said, “wicked woman, to suffer here a little pain, than burn eternally. Confess, or I will send you into the world beyond.” She was quiet for a moment, desisting from her useless struggle.
“You will release me if I say?”
“I will do so.”