Oh, how she hated the man! How she loathed his red, insolent grin! Would he never leave her? Was she to be exposed, day by day, and hour by hour, to this horror?
He eyed her shrewdly.
“You haven’t been turning stubborn?” he said, “have you? And they’ve had to handle you already? And bring you to your senses? And so they have set you to brooming? But Bishop,” with a frown, “gave me no notion of that. He said you came like a lamb.”
“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s nothing.” It was not only that she was ashamed of the mark on her arm, and shrank from showing it. But his leering, insolent face terrified her. Though he was not tipsy, he had spent the small hours at a club; and the old port still hummed in his brain. “It’s not that,” she repeated firmly, and more quietly, hoping to get rid of him.
“Here,” he answered, “let me look at it.”
“No!”
“Pooh, nonsense!” he replied, pressing his advantage, and entering the cell. “Nonsense, girl, let me look at it.” He stepped nearer, and peremptorily held out his hand. He could touch her. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek. “There’s no room here for airs and tempers,” he continued. “How, if I don’t see it, am I to know that they have not been ill-treating you? Show me your wrist, girl.”
But she recoiled from him into the farthest corner, holding her arms behind her. Her face was a picture of passionate defiance.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Don’t come near me!”
“You’ve no right to touch me. They have not hurt my wrist. I tell you it is nothing. And if you lay a finger on me I will scream!”