"Well, until she went to live with Hawkesworth, your honour."
"Ah!" Tom said, his face white; only that word. But, dropping his hand from her arm, he stood back.
She should have known that all was lost then; that the game was played out. But, womanlike, she could not accept defeat. "It's a lie!" she shrieked. "A dirty, cowardly lie! It's not true! I swear it is not true! It's not true!" And breathless, panting, furious, she turned first to one and then to another, stretching out her hands, heaping senseless denial on denial. At last, when she read no relenting in the boy's face, but only the quivering of pain as he winced under the lash of her loosened tongue, she cast the mask--that had already slipped--completely away, and, turning on the old man, "You fool! oh, you fool!" she cried. "Have you nothing to say now that you have ruined me? Pay the beast, do you hear? Pay him, or I'll ruin you!"
But the clock-maker, terrified as he was, clung sullenly to his money. "There's a detainer," he muttered. "It's no good, Bess. If s no good, I tell you!"
"Well, pay the detainer! Pay that, too!" she retorted. "Pay it, you old skinflint, or I'll swear to you for gold clipping! and you'll hang at Tyburn, as your friend Jonathan Thomas did! Have a care, will you, or I'll do it, so help me!"
The old man screamed a palsied curse at her. Sir Hervey touched the lad's arm. "Come," he said sternly. And he turned to the door.
Tom shuddered, but followed at his heels as a beaten hound follows. The woman saw her last chance passing from her, sprang forward, and tried to seize his arm; tried to detain him, tried to gain his ear for a final appeal. But the bailiff interfered. "Softly, mistress, softly," he said. "You know the rules. Get the old 'un to pay, and you may do as you please."
He held her while Tom was got out, dizzy and shaking, his eyes opened to the abyss from which he had been plucked back. But, though Coke closed the door behind them, the woman's voice still followed them, and shocked and horrified them with its shrill clamour. Tom shuddered at the dreadful sound; yet lingered.
"I must get something," he muttered, avoiding his companion's eyes. "It is upstairs."
"What is it?" Coke answered impatiently. And, anxious to get the lad out of hearing, he took his arm, and urged him towards the street. "Whatever it is, I'll send my man for it."