"I will!" she answered through her teeth--and she swept past him out of
the room.
"I'll tell you who I thought it was at first," said he, heartily.
The Shadow of the Rope
CHAPTER I
THE END OF THEIR LIFE
"It is finished," said the woman, speaking very quietly to herself. "Not
another day, nor a night, if I can be ready before morning!"
She stood alone in her own room, with none to mark the white-hot pallor
of the oval face, the scornful curve of quivering nostrils, the dry
lustre of flashing eyes. But while she stood a heavy step went
blustering down two flights of stairs, and double doors slammed upon the
ground floor.
It was a little London house, with five floors from basement to attic,
and a couple of rooms upon each, like most little houses in London; but
this one had latterly been the scene of an equally undistinguished drama
of real life, upon which the curtain was even now descending. Although a
third was whispered by the world, the persons of this drama were really
only two.
Rachel Minchin, before the disastrous step which gave her that surname,
was a young Australian lady whose apparent attractions were only
equalled by her absolute poverty; that is to say, she had been born at
Heidelberg, near Melbourne, of English parents more gentle than
practical, who soon left her to fight the world and the devil with no
other armory than a good face, a fine nature, and the pride of any
heiress.
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