He coloured angrily and withdrew his hand.
'Take it,' she said. 'I refuse to be indebted to you for anything.'
'I will not take it.'
She threw the coppers on the ground and pursued her way.
Jack put his foot on them and ground them into the mud.
Occasionally he encountered her in a lane; when this was so he could see by her manner that if it were possible for her to slip out of his way down a sidepath, she would do it; if it were not, she tossed her head and passed without a word.
However, on one occasion she halted, hesitated, seemed inclined to speak—her lips moved; but she changed her mind and passed on her course without a word.
One day the fancy took Jack Rattenbury to revisit the rift that had been formed when Mrs. Marley's cottage had been ruined. The kegs that had been secreted in the cave had all been removed. What induced Jack to go there, whether it were curiosity to ascertain what alteration had taken place in its aspect, or whether the association of the place with the eventful night when he escaped by it from the preventive men drew him there, he did not himself know.
He crossed the estuary and sauntered along the beach. The tide was ebbing and leaving on the pebbles ribbons of weed and a thread of froth.
Turning sharply round an angle of the cliff he came on the mouth of the chasm, and stood, breathless, not knowing whether to retreat or to go forward, for there before him, on a mass of fallen chalk, sat Winefred, her head in her hands, sobbing.