“The whole world ain’t a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I can tell you—­what’s your name—­Bessie—­let alone a dam’ parlour in a hutch.  Marry!  He wants me to marry and settle!  And as likely as not he has looked out the girl too—­dash my soul!  And do you know the Judy, may I ask?”

She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and fretting too much to notice her distress.  He bit his thumb with rage at the mere idea.  A window rattled up.

“A grinning, information fellow,” pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically, in measured tones.  And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make the night itself mad—­to pour insanity and disaster on the earth.  “Now I know what’s wrong with the people here, my dear.  Why, of course!  With this mad chap going about.  Don’t you have anything to do with him, Bessie.  Bessie, I say!”

They stood as if dumb.  The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at the window.  Suddenly he cried, piercingly:  “Bessie—­I see you.  I’ll tell Harry.”

She made a movement as if to run away, but stopped and raised her hands to her temples.  Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more than a man of bronze.  Over their heads the crazy night whimpered and scolded in an old man’s voice.

“Send him away, my dear.  He’s only a vagabond.  What you want is a good home of your own.  That chap has no home—­he’s not like Harry.  He can’t be Harry.  Harry is coming to-morrow.  Do you hear?  One day more,” he babbled more excitedly; “never you fear—­Harry shall marry you.”

His voice rose very shrill and mad against the regular deep soughing of the swell coiling heavily about the outer face of the sea-wall.

“He will have to.  I shall make him, or if not”—­he swore a great oath—­“I’ll cut him off with a shilling to-morrow, and leave everything to you.  I shall.  To you.  Let him starve.”

The window rattled down.

Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step toward Bessie.  “So it’s you—­the girl,” he said, in a lowered voice.  She had not moved, and she remained half turned away from him, pressing her head in the palms of her hands.  “My word!” he continued, with an invisible half-smile on his lips.  “I have a great mind to stop. . . .”

Her elbows were trembling violently.

“For a week,” he finished without a pause.

She clapped her hands to her face.

He came up quite close, and took hold of her wrists gently.  She felt his breath on her ear.

“It’s a scrape I am in—­this, and it is you that must see me through.”  He was trying to uncover her face.  She resisted.  He let her go then, and stepping back a little, “Have you got any money?” he asked.  “I must be off now.”

She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he waited, looking away from her, while, trembling all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find the pocket of her dress.

“Here it is!” she whispered.  “Oh, go away! go away for God’s sake!  If I had more—­more—­I would give it all to forget—­to make you forget.”