This Man's Wife Part 95

She struck the mare with her whip, and it would have dashed off, but Crellock was smoothing her mane above the reins, and as they tightened they came into his hand, and he checked the little animal which began to rear.

"Quiet! quiet!" cried Crellock fiercely; and he held the mare back with ears twitching and nostril quivering.

"Let my rein go," cried Julia.

"Wait a bit; I've a lot to say to you yet, my dear," cried Crellock indignantly. "Look here. Did your father say that?"

"Yes; and you know it is true."

"I say again, did your father say that to your mother?"

"Yes," indignantly.

"Then that's why she has always shown me such a stiff upper lip, and been so bitter against me. I wouldn't have stopped in her house a day, she was so hard on me, only I wanted to be near you, and to think about that day coming out of the prison. Well, of all the mean, cowardly things for a man to do!"

"My father is no coward. You dare not speak to him like that."

"I dare say a deal more to him, and I will if he runs me down before you and your mother, when I wanted to show you I wasn't such a bad one after all. It's mean," he cried, working himself up. "It's cowardly. But it's just like him. When that robbery took place before, he escaped and I took the blame."

"Loose my rein!" cried Julia. "Man, you are mad."

"See here," cried Crellock, catching her arm, and looking white with rage. "I'll take my part; but I'm not going to have the credit of the Dixons' business put on to my shoulders. I'm not a hypocrite, Miss Julia. I've done wrong, as I said before, and was punished. There, it's of no use for you to struggle. I mean you to hear. I want to stand well with you. I always did after you gave me that drink of water, and now I find I've been made out to be a regular bad one, so as some one else may get off."

"Will you loose my rein?" cried Julia.

"No, I won't. Now you are going to call out for help?"

"No," cried Julia. "I'm not such a coward as to be afraid of you."

"That you are not," he said admiringly, in spite of the pa.s.sion he was in. "Now once more tell me this. I'll believe you. You never told a lie, and you never would. Is this a sham to back up your father?"

She did not answer, only gave him a haughtily indignant look.

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know that your father did all that Dixons' business himself?"

"I know it is false."

"And that I only did what he told me, and planted the deeds at the different banks?"

"It is false, I tell you."

"You're making me savage," he cried in his blundering way. "I tell you I'm not such a brute. Look here once more. Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that we have all been living on what he--your father--got from Dixons' bank?"

"How dare you!" cried Julia, scarlet with anger.

"And that you and your mother brought over the plunder when you came?"

For answer, Julia struck his hand with her whip, giving so keen a cut that he loosened his hold, and she went off like the wind towards home.

"What a fool I was to talk like that!" he cried biting his lips, as he set spurs to his horse and galloped off in pursuit. "I've been talking like a madman. It all comes of being regularly in love."

VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER FIVE.

"YOU ARE MY WIFE."

Stephen Crellock was fifty yards behind, with his horse completely blown, when Julia quickly slipped from her saddle, threw the rein over the hook at the door-post, and ran upstairs to the room where her mother loved to sit gazing over the beauties of the cove-marked estuary.

Mrs Hallam started up in alarm, and she had evidently been weeping.

"What is it, my child?" she cried, as Julia threw herself sobbing in her arms.

"That man--that man!" cried Julia. "Has he dared to insult you?" cried Mrs Hallam, with her eyes flashing, and her motherly indignation giving her the mien of an outraged queen.

"Yes--you--my father," sobbed Julia; and in broken words she panted out the story of the ride.

Mrs Hallam had been indignant, and a strange shiver of horror had pa.s.sed through her, as it seemed as she listened that she was going to hear in form of words the dread that had been growing in her mind for a long time past.

It was then at first with a sense of relief that she gathered from her child's incoherent statement that Crellock had uttered few words of love. When, however, she thoroughly realised what had pa.s.sed, and the charge that Crellock had made, it came with such a shock in its possibility, that her brain reeled.

"It is not true," she cried, recovering herself quickly. "Julia, it is as false as the man who made it."

"I knew--I knew it was, dear mother," sobbed Julia. "My father shall drive him from the house."

"Stay here," said Mrs Hallam sternly. Then, more gently, "My child, you are flushed, and hot. There, there! we have been so happy lately.

We must not let a petty accusation like this disturb us."

"So happy, mother," cried Julia piteously, "when our friends forsake us; and Mr Bayle is as good as forbidden the house?"

"Hush, my darling?" said Mrs Hallam agitatedly. "There, go to your room."

She hurried Julia away, for she heard the trampling of the horses' feet as they were led round to the stables, and then a familiar step upon the stairs.

"I was coming to speak to you," she said as Hallam opened the door.

"And I was coming to you," he said roughly. "What has that little idiot been saying to Crellock to put him in such a rage?"

"Sit down," she said, pushing a chair towards him, and there was a look in her eyes he had never seen before.

"Well, there. Now be sharp. I don't care to be bothered with trifles; I've had troubles enough. Has that champagne been put to cool?"

She looked, half wonderingly, in the heavy, sensual face, growing daily more flushed and changed.

"Come, go on," he said, as if the look troubled him. "Now, then, what is it? Crellock is half mad. She has offended him horribly."

"She has been defending her father's honour," said Mrs Hallam slowly.

"Defending my honour?" he said, smiling. "Ah!" Mrs Hallam clasped her hands, and a sigh full of the agony of her heart escaped her lips. The scales seemed to be falling from her eyes, but she wilfully closed them again in her pa.s.sion of love and trust.