She saw what was going on, lying with gagged mouth and labouring lungs. She could not breathe fast enough, and the air screamed through her nostrils. The blood mounted and purpled her face, and swelled her veins to bursting.
At last everything had been removed, and the carpet-bag was filled with the contents of the drawer. Dench thrust back the row of crooks and swaying garments to the place normally occupied by them, and again chuckled at the ingenuity of the contrivance that had twice baffled him. Then he leisurely descended from the stool, and halted on his way to the door to look at Jane Marley as she lay bound at his feet. The laugh was still on his lips.
Her head in falling had struck the overturned clock, or been cut by the broken glass of the face, and it was bleeding. Her profuse black hair, tinged with grey, was dishevelled, and lay in a tangle about and under her head; the face was turned on one side, and the eyes flared at him like coals in a blast furnace. He set his teeth. A malignant expression came over his face.
'Eh, Jane! Better to have gone shares as I once proposed, than lose all and come to this!'
He prepared with lifted foot to kick her in the face with his boatman's shod boot, when a shiver ran through the house—a shiver like that which passes over a man when, so it is asserted, an enemy treads on his predestined grave.
'Time to be off, by ——,' said he, and darted to the door. 'Jane—I leave you to your fate.'
He unlocked the door, passed through; he had removed the key. He locked it from without, and threw the key away among the bushes.
For a few moments he stood irresolute what to do, in which direction to turn.
He was unwilling, carrying the carpet-bag, to pass through the crowd of spectators, and he stayed to consider whether by any means he could reach the ferry unobserved.
There was an open patch before the cottage, screened by bushes so as not to be overlooked from the down. He took a few steps in one direction on it, then halted—and took another.