“Well, I will tell you.”
But she hesitated and trembled. She fixed her eyes on the wild, foaming, leaden sea, and pressed her bosom with both hands.
“I poisoned him.”
“Judith!”
“It is true, I gave him arsenic, once; that your father had let me have for Jamie. If he had taken it the second time, when I offered it him in his bowl of porridge, he would be dead now. Do you see—he holds me in his hands and I cannot stir. I could not escape till I know what he intends to do with me. Now go—leave me to my fate.”
“Judith—it is not true! Though I hear this from your lips I will not believe it. No; you need my father’s, you need my help more than ever.” He put her hand to his lips. “It is white—innocent. I know it, in spite of your words.”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
TWO ALTERNATIVES.
When Judith returned to Othello Cottage, she was surprised to see a man promenading around it, flattening his nose at the window, so as to bring his eyes against the glass, then, finding that the breath from his nostrils dimmed the pane, wiping the glass and again flattening his nose. At first he held his hands on the window-ledge, but being incommoded by the refraction of the light, put his open hands against the pane, one on each side of his face. Having satisfied himself at one casement, he went to another, and made the same desperate efforts to see in at that.
Judith coming up to the door, and putting the key in, disturbed him, he started, turned, and with a nose much like putty, but rapidly purpling with returned circulation, disclosed the features of Mr. Scantlebray, Senior.