Bess said never a word to him, but it was with a sinking heart that she heard Dan shut and lock the door. What would they do with her when they returned? Of a surety she had discovered some great secret that had lain hid in the deeps of Pevensel. What if her meddling should bring her to her death? XXXVI An hour passed, dragging its linked minutes like a snake crawling lazily in the long grass under the summer sun. Bess, bound fast to the chair, sat like one weak after a long illness, the sunlight falling on the floor, to be reflected upon the brown beams of the old room. The girl’s face looked white and apathetic against the dark background of an old linen-press. Her eyes stared out steadily through the window at the green woods bathed in sunshine, and the white clouds sailing slowly north across the infinite azure of the June sky. The life fire had burned low in her since Dan had struck her down in the woods. The shock of the night had not yet lifted from her heart. Old Isaac’s pitiless gray eyes still haunted her, and she remembered the gleam of the barrel of the gun. This same evening she was to have met Jeffray at Holy Cross, and the thought stirred the blood in her a little. She lay back in the chair, resting her head upon the rail, and taking her breath in deeply with slow, sighing inspirations. The memories of her last meeting with Jeffray began to work in her with quickening force. All the sweet complicity of the plot set the cords of her heart vibrating. If he but knew, if he had but guessed how Dan had treated her! If he were only wise as to her present peril! With the increasing sense of her own powerlessness the spirit of revolt in her waxed but the more importunate. Why should she be made the creature of this man’s passions? She seemed to feel again the great fist, swinging with all the brutality of the man’s nature, and crashing into her face. All the ignominies of the past weeks rose up to taunt and madden her. All her hate and loathing waxed fiercer as she thought of her helpless yearning towards Jeffray. She began to struggle and twist in the chair, striving to get her teeth to the knots about her wrist. Dan had fastened them down to the front stretcher of the chair, and wrestle and strain as she would she could not reach them. What could she do to free herself from the shame and the dread that encompassed her? Scream! Yes, but who would hear her, and who would help her if they heard? Ursula? Poor doddering Ursula! Doubtless she had been locked safely in her cottage, and Bess mistrusted the old woman’s courage when Isaac’s will had been declared law. Incensed the more by her own thoughts, she struggled again and again with the cords, twisting and straining till the oak chair rocked and creaked. The muscles stood out under the brown skin of her forearms. Her bruised lips began to bleed again as she held her breath, struggling and working her body from side to side.