ich she
took first from one pocket of her apron and then from another. While she
was engaged in filling the pouch, Zack, standing at the supper-table,
drummed on the floor with his foot to attract her attention, and
interrogatively held up a decanter of wine and a glass. She started as
the sound struck on her delicate nerves; and, looking at young Thorpe
directly, signed that she did not wish for any wine. The sudden movement
of her body thus occasioned, shook off her lap a little mother-of-pearl
bodkin case, which lay more than half out of one of the pockets of her
apron. The bodkin case rolled under the stool, without her seeing it,
for she was looking towards the supper-table: without being observed by
Mat, for his eyes were following the direction of her's: without being
heard by Mr. Blyth, for Zack was, as usual, chattering and making a
noise.

When she had put two other little toys that remained in her pockets into
the pouch, she drew the mouth of it tight, passed the loops of the loose
thongs that fastened it, over one of her arms, and then, rising to her
feet, pointed to it, and looked at Mat with a very significant nod.
The action expressed the idea she wished to communicate, plainly
enough:--"See," it seemed to say, "see what a pretty work-bag I can make
of your tobacco-pouch!"

But Mat, to all appearance, was not able to find out the meaning of one
of her gestures, easy as they were to interpret. His senses seemed
to grow more and more perturbed the longer he looked at her. As she
curtseyed to him again, and moved away in despair, he stepped forward a
little, and suddenly and awkwardly held out his hand. "The big man seems
to be getting a little less afraid of me," thought Madonna, turning
directly, and meeting his clumsy advance towards her, with a smile. But
the instant he took her hand, her lips closed, and she shivered through
her whole body as if dead fingers had touched her. "Oh!" she thought
now, "how cold his hand is! how cold his hand is!"

"If I hadn't felt her warm to touch, I should have been dreaming
to-night that I'd seen Mary's ghost." This was the grim fancy which
darkly troubled Mat's mind, at the very same moment when Madonna was
thinking how cold his hand was. He turned away impatiently from some
wine offered to him just then by Zack; and, looking vacantly into the
fire, drew his coat-cuff several times over his eyes and forehead.

The chill from the strange man's hand still lingered ic