“By G—d!” the voice which had affrighted her repeated. “Who’s this? Are you mad, girl?” And the speaker sprang to his feet. He was one of two thickset, unshaven men who were engaged in playing cards on a corner of the table. His comrade kept his place, but stared, a jug half lifted to his lips; while a third man, the only other present, a loose-limbed, good-looking gipsy lad, who had opened the door, grinned at the unexpected vision—as if his stake in the matter was less, and his interest in feminine charms greater. But nowhere, though the kitchen was wastefully lighted, and her frightened eyes flew to every part of it, was the man to be seen whom she came to meet.
She turned quickly upon Bess, as if she thought she might still escape. But the door was already closed behind them, the key turned. And before she could speak:
“Have done a minute!” Bess muttered, pushing her aside. “And let me deal with them.” Then, advancing into the room—but not before she had seen the great bar drawn across the locked door—“Shut your trap!” she cried to the man who had spoken. “And listen!”
“Who’s this?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Who is it, I say?” the man cried, even more violently. “And what the blazes have you brought her here for?” And he poured out a string of oaths that drove the blood from Henrietta’s cheeks. “Who is it? Who is it?” he continued. “D’you think, you vixen, that because my neck is in a noose, I want some one to pull the rope tight?”
“What a fool you are to talk before her!” Bess answered, with quiet scorn. “If any one pulls the hemp it’s you.”
“Lord help you, I’ll do more than talk!” the man rejoined. And he snatched up a heavy pistol that lay on the table beside the cards. “Quick, will you? Speak! Who is it, and why do you bring her?”
“I’ll speak quick enough, but not here!” Bess answered, contemptuously. “If you must jaw, come into the dairy! Come, don’t think that I’m afraid of you!” And she turned to Henrietta, who, stricken dumb by the scene, recognised too late the trap into which she had fallen. “Do you stay here,” she said, “unless you want his hand on you. Sit there!” pointing abruptly to the settle, “and keep mum until I come back.”
But Henrietta’s terror at the prospect of being abandoned by the girl, though that girl had betrayed her, was such that she seized Bess by the sleeve and held her back.