eep
away."

He sprang like a horse to the lash. "It's h----ll!" he exclaimed. "Put
back your cursed money. I won't do it!"

"You won't do it?"

There was such quiet despair in her accents as drove him to fury.

"I won't do it!" he repeated in a low voice that frightened her. "I'll
rot in a gaol first!--I'll swing on a gallows!--I'll die in a ditch!
Take care as _you_ don't give me something to swing for! Yes, _you_,
with your pale face, and your high-handed ways, and your cold, cruel
heart that can send a poor devil to the other end o' the earth with
a 'pleasant trip, and here's your health, my lad,' like as if I was
goin' across to Lambeth. And yet you stand there as beautiful as a
hangel; and I--I'm a fool, I am! And--and I don't know what keeps me
from slippin' my knife into that white throat o' yourn, except it is
as you don't look not a morsel dashed, nor skeared, you don't; no more
than you was that first night as ever I see your face. And I wish my
eyes had been lime-blinded first, and I'd been dead and rotting in my
grave."

With anything like a contest, as usual, Maud's courage came back.

"I am not in your power yet," said she, raising her haughty head.
"There stands the cab. When we reach it I get in, and you shall never
have a chance of speaking to me after to-day. Once for all. Will you
take this money, or leave it? I shall not make the offer again."

He took the notes from her hand, with a horrible oath, and dashed them
on the ground; then growing so pale she thought he must have fallen,
seemed to recover his temper and his presence of mind, picked them up,
returned them very quietly, and stood aside on the narrow pavement to
let her pass.

"You are right," said he, in a voice so changed, she looked anxiously
in his white face, working like that of a man in a fit. "I was a fool
a while ago. I know better now. But I won't take the notes, my lady.
Thank ye kindly just the same. I'll wish ye good-mornin' now. O, no!
Make yourself easy. I'll never ask to see ye again."

He staggered while he walked away, and laid hold of an area railing as
he turned the street corner; but Maud was too glad to get rid of her
tormentor at any price to speculate on his meaning, his movements, or
the storm that raged within his breast.

And now, sitting back in her carriage, bowling home-ward, with the
fresh evening breeze in her face, the few men left to take their hats
off looked in that face, and while making up th