"What are you standing mooning there for?" asked the man. "Why don't
you go to bed?"
"Why have you brought that sailor here?" inquired the girl, without
noticing Milsom's question.
"What's that to you? You'd like to know my business, wouldn't you? I've
brought him here because he wanted to come. Is that a good answer? I've
brought him here because he has money to lose, and is in the humour to
lose it. Is that a better answer?"
"Yes," returned the girl, fixing her eyes upon him with a look of
horror; "you will win his money, and, if he is angry, there will be a
quarrel, as there was on that hideous night three years ago, when you
brought home the foreign sailor, and what happened to that man will
happen to this one. Father," cried the girl, suddenly and passionately,
"let this man leave the house in safety. I sometimes think my heart is
almost as hard as yours; but this man trusts us. Don't let any harm
come to him."
"Why, what harm should come to him?"
For some time the girl called Jenny stood before her father in silence,
with her head bent, and her face in shadow; then she lifted her head
suddenly, and looked at him piteously.
"The other!" she murmured; "the other! I remember what happened to
him."
"Come, drop that!" cried Milsom, savagely; "do you think I'm going to
stand your mad talk? Get to bed, and go to sleep.
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