The man felt his nerve going all to pieces.
“Come, come, my good sir, do you think I am going to stay here all night?” he answered brutally.... Outside the door, Tourtel touched his sleeve. “And suppose your directions are not carried out?” said he in his thick whisper.
Owen gave no spoken answer, but Tourtel was satisfied. “I'll come an' put the horse in,” he said, leading the way through the kitchen to the stables. Owen drove off with a parting curse and cut with the whip because the horse slipped upon the stones. A long ray of light from Tourtel's lantern followed him down the lane. When he turned out on to the high road to St. Gilles, he reined in a moment, to look back at Les Calais. This is the one point from which a portion of the house is visible, and he could see the lighted window of the old man's bedroom plainly through the trees.
What was happening there? he asked himself; and the Tourtel's cupidity and callousness, Margot's coarse cruel tricks, rose before him with appalling distinctness. Yet the price was in his hand, the first step of the ladder gained; he saw himself to-morrow, perhaps in the drawing-room of Rohais, paying the necessary visit of intimation and condolence. He felt he had already won Mrs. Poidevin's favour. Among women, always poor physiognomists, he knew he passed for a handsome man; among the Islanders, the assurance of his address would pass for good breeding; all he had lacked hitherto was the opportunity to shine. This his acquaintance with Mrs. Poidevin would secure him. And he had trampled on his conscience so often before, it had now little elasticity left. Just an extra glass of brandy to-morrow, and to-day would be as securely laid as those other episodes of his past.
While he watched, some one shifted the lamp ... a woman's shadow was thrown upon the white blind ... it wavered, grew monstrous, and spread, until the whole window was shrouded in gloom.... Owen put the horse into a gallop ... and from up at Les Calais, the long-drawn melancholy howling of the dog filled with forebodings the silent night.
By A. S. Hartrick