They stared again at the red blinds, and in a lull of the wind a clock struck nine.

“There is an hour before the magistrate comes,” said Rudolf.

“You take that hour,” said his companion; “I will have the hour after the magistrate has gone.”

Rudolf ran across to the inn.  The sentinel at the door remained behind.  Both men were pleased,—­Rudolf because he had his hour immediately, his fellow-soldier because once the magistrate had come and gone, he would take as long as he pleased.

Meanwhile the man and woman hand in hand drew nearer to the villa, but very slowly.  For, apart from the weather’s hindrances, the woman’s anger had grown.  She stopped, she fell down when there was no need to fall, she wept, she struggled to free her hand, and finally, when they had taken shelter beneath a portico, she sank down on the stone steps, and with many oaths and many tears refused to budge a foot.  Strangely enough, it was not so much the inclemency of the night or the danger of the enterprise which provoked this obstinacy, as some outrage and dishonour to her figure.

“You may talk all night,” she cried between her sobs, “about O’Toole and his beautiful German.  They can go hang for me!  I am only a servant, I know.  I am poor, I admit it.  But poverty isn’t a crime.  It gives no one the right to make a dwarf of me.  No, no!”—­this as Wogan bent down to lift her from the ground—­“plague on you all!  I will sit here and die; and when I am found frozen and dead perhaps you will be sorry for your cruelty to a poor girl who wanted nothing better than to serve you.”  Here Jenny was so moved by the piteousness of her fate that her tears broke out again.  She wept loudly.  Wogan was in an extremity of alarm lest someone should pass, or the people of the house be aroused.  He tried most tenderly to comfort her.  She would have none of the consolations.  He took her in his arms and raised her to her feet.  She swore more loudly than she had wept, she kicked at his legs, she struck at his head with her fist.  In another moment she would surely have cried murder.  Wogan had to let her sink back upon the steps, where she fell to whimpering.

“I am not beautiful, I know; I never boasted that I was; but I have a figure and limbs that a painter would die to paint.  And what do you make of me?  A maggot, a thing all body like a nasty bear.  Oh, curse the day that I set out with such tyrants!  A pretty figure of fun I should make before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees.  No, you shall hang me first!  Why couldn’t O’Toole do his own work, the ninny, I hate him!  He’s tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it, who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you must drag me through the dirt without heels!”