"I do not know what you would have done--but for that!" he retorted. "Maimed me or wizened me, perhaps! Or, may be, made me waste away as you did the child that died three doors away last Sunday!" Her face changed slowly. Prepared as she had been for the worst by many an hour of vigil beside her mother's bed, the horror of this precise accusation--and such an accusation--overcame her. "What?" she cried. "You dare to say that I--that I----" She could not finish. But her eyes lightened, her form dilated with passion; and tipsy, ignorant, brutish as he was, the Spaniard could not be blind to the indignation, the resentment, the very wonder which stopped her breath and choked her utterance. At the sight some touch of shame, some touch of pity, made itself felt in the dull recesses even of that brain. "I don't say it," he muttered awkwardly. "It is what they are saying in the street." "In the street?" "Ay, where else?" He knew who said it, for he knew whence his orders came: but he was not going to tell her. Yet the spark of kindliness which she had kindled still lived--how could it be otherwise in presence of her youth and gentleness? "If you'll take my advice," he continued roughly, "you'll not show yourself in the streets unless you wish to be mishandled, my girl. It will be time enough when the time comes. Even now, if you were to leave your old witch of a mother and get good protection, there is no knowing but you might be got clear! You are a fair bit of red and white," with a grin. "And it is not far to Savoy! Will you come if I risk it?" A gesture, half refusal, half loathing, answered him. "Oh, very well!" he said. The short-lived fit of pity passed from him; he scowled. "You'll think differently when they have the handling of you. I'm glad to be going, for where there's one fire there are apt to be more; and I am a Christian, no matter who's not! Let who will burn, I'll not!" He picked up one bundle and, carrying it out, raised his voice. A man, who had shrunk, it seemed, from entering the house, showed his face in the light which streamed from the door. To this fellow he gave the bundle, and shouldering the other, he went heavily out, leaving the door wide open behind him. Claude strode to it and closed it; but not so quickly that he had not a glimpse of three or four pairs of eyes staring in out of the darkness; eyes so curious, so fearful, so quickly and noiselessly withdrawn--for even while he looked, they were gone--that he went back to the hearth with a shiver of apprehension. Fortunately, she had not seen them. She stood where he had left her, in the same attitude of amazement into which Grio's accusation had cast her. As she met his gaze--then, at last, she melted. The lamplight showed her eyes brimming over with tears; her lips quivered, her breast heaved under the storm of resentment.