Julia was but half roused. 'Am. I--to get out?' she said dully.
'Ay you are! By G--d, you are a cool one!' the man continued, watching her in a kind of admiration, as she rose and stepped by him like one in a dream. 'And a pretty one for all your temper! The master is not here, but the man is; and if--'
'Stow it, you fool!' cried a voice from the darkness, 'and get aboard!'
'Who said anything else?' the ruffian retorted, but with a look that, had Julia been more sensible of it, must have chilled her blood. 'Who said anything else? So there you are, both of you, and none the worse, I'll take my davy! Lash away, Tim! Make the beggars fly!'
As he uttered the last words he sprang on the wheel, and before the tutor could believe his good fortune, or feel assured that there was not some cruel deceit playing on him, the carriage splashed up the mud, and rattled away. In a trice the lights grew small and were gone, and the two were left standing side by side in the darkness. On one hand a mass of trees rose high above them, blotting out the grey sky; on the other the faint outline of a low wall appeared to divide the lane in which they stood--the mud rising rapidly about their shoes--from a flat aguish expanse over which the night hung low.
It was a strange position, but neither of the two felt this to the fall; Mr. Thomasson in his thankfulness that at any cost he had eluded Mr. Dunborough's vengeance, Julia because at the moment she cared not what became of her. Naturally, however, Mr. Thomasson, whose satisfaction knew no drawback save that of their present condition, and who had to congratulate himself on a risk safely run, and a good friend gained, was the first to speak.
'My dear young lady,' he said, in an insinuating tone very different from that in which he had called for her kerchief, 'I vow I am more thankful than I can say, that I was able to come to your assistance! I shudder to think what those ruffians might not have done had you been alone, and--and unprotected! Now I trust all danger is over. We have only to find a house in which we can pass the night, and to-morrow we may laugh at our troubles!'
She turned her head towards him, 'Laugh?' she said, and a sob took her in the throat.
He felt himself set back; then remembered the delusion under which she lay, and went to dispel it--pompously. But his evil angel was at his shoulder; again at the last moment he hesitated. Something in the despondency of the girl's figure, in the hopelessness of her tone, in the intensity of the grief that choked her utterance, wrought with the remembrance of her beauty and her disorder in the coach, to set his crafty mind working in a new direction. He saw that she was for the time utterly hopeless; utterly heedless what became of herself. That would not last; but his cunning told him that with returning sensibility would come pique, resentment, the desire to be avenged. In such a case one man was sometimes as good as another. It was impossible to say what she might not do or be induced to do, if full advantage were taken of a moment so exceptional. Fifty thousand pounds! And her fresh young beauty! What an opening it was! The way lay far from clear, the means were to find; but faint heart never won fair lady, and Mr. Thomasson had known strange things come to pass.
He was quick to choose his part. 'Come, child,' he said, assuming a kind of paternal authority. 'At least we must find a roof. We cannot spend the night here.'