“My dear man,” she asked abruptly, “do you expect any good to come of this?”

“I do hope so indeed, Miss Jacobus.”  I tried to speak in the easy tone of an afternoon caller.  “You see, I am here after some bags.”

“Bags!  Look at that now!  Didn’t I hear you holding forth to that graceless wretch?”

“You would like to see me in my grave,” uttered the motionless girl hoarsely.

“Grave!  What about me?  Buried alive before I am dead for the sake of a thing blessed with such a pretty father!” she cried; and turning to me:  “You’re one of these men he does business with.  Well—­why don’t you leave us in peace, my good fellow?”

It was said in a tone—­this “leave us in peace!” There was a sort of ruffianly familiarity, a superiority, a scorn in it.  I was to hear it more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge of human nature if you thought that this was my last visit to that house—­where no respectable person had put foot for ever so many years.  No, you would be very much mistaken if you imagined that this reception had scared me away.  First of all I was not going to run before a grotesque and ruffianly old woman.

And then you mustn’t forget these necessary bags.  That first evening Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me loyally that he didn’t know whether he could do anything at all for me.  He had been thinking it over.  It was too difficult, he feared. . . .  But he did not give it up in so many words.

We were only three at table; the girl by means of repeated “Won’t!” “Shan’t!” and “Don’t care!” having conveyed and affirmed her intention not to come to the table, not to have any dinner, not to move from the verandah.  The old relative hopped about in her flat slippers and piped indignantly, Jacobus towered over her and murmured placidly in his throat; I joined jocularly from a distance, throwing in a few words, for which under the cover of the night I received secretly a most vicious poke in the ribs from the old woman’s elbow or perhaps her fist.  I restrained a cry.  And all the time the girl didn’t even condescend to raise her head to look at any of us.  All this may sound childish—­and yet that stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour.

And so we sat down to the food around the light of a good many candles while she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark as if feeding her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the admirable garden.

Before leaving I said to Jacobus that I would come next day to hear if the bag affair had made any progress.  He shook his head slightly at that.

“I’ll haunt your house daily till you pull it off.  You’ll be always finding me here.”

His faint, melancholy smile did not part his thick lips.

“That will be all right, Captain.”