Bess, leaning forward in the chair, stared at the old woman with a swift flooding of blood into her face.
Instinctively she had chosen the word that she had used to Ursula when she was a child. There was a husky and vibrating wistfulness in the voice that seemed to carry strange and simple pathos.
Ursula was standing at the window, wringing her hands together. For two hours past she had been the creature of indecision, halting between fear of Isaac and great dread of the hints that the old man had cast into her ears.
Ursula began to whimper as she looked in at the girl, the impotence of her dotage showing in her face.
“They be all away save Solomon,” she answered.
Bess’s face strained painfully towards the window.
Ursula still twisted her hands together and peered round her suspiciously.
“Chopping firewood in his shed. I slipped round through the trees. Lord o’ mercy, what’s to be done—what’s to be done!”
Bess’s strength of purpose increased with Ursula’s indecision.
“Ye’ve always been kind to me. Will ye let them bury me in the forest with a bullet in my heart?”
Ursula began to sway to and fro, pressing her hands to her bosom, whimpering and muttering like one demented.
“Why did ye meddle, Bess—why did ye meddle?”
“Isaac wanted to shoot me by the Monk’s Grave.”
“Dan stood for me then; he’ll not stand for me again. Isaac will shoot me; I’ve seen death in his eyes.”
Ursula stretched herself across the window-sill with her head between her hands. Her distress was pitiable in its impotence. Bess watched her, realizing that her one hope rested on the feeble and faltering courage of this crooked and half-witless creature.
Ursula darted up her head and looked at Bess.
“Lord have mercy on me, how can a poor old cripple climb in to ye?”
“Try, now try for Bess’s sake. My blood will be upon you if Isaac has his way.”
The words seemed to strike Ursula full in the face. She stood shaking, blinking her eyes, and working her loose, inturned lips together. Then she thrust her arms over the sill, gripped the wooden ledge within, and tried to drag herself to the level of the window. Bess watched the wrinkled and trembling head straining forward upon its yellow neck. The sinews stood out in the sticks of forearms, the feet scraped and worked against the wall. Slowly Ursula dragged herself up and through so that she could get one knee upon the ledge. She lay there panting a moment, looking at Bess.