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She had lived with rough men long enough to know he had no motive no thought at all. But at the profanation of such a touch she shrank back, uttering a cry. At her elbow she heard a quick step and a sharp-drawn breath or hiss. "AW, JACK!" cried Bill. Then Kells, in lithe and savage swiftness, came between them. He swung his gun, hitting Bill full in the face.
As the hours passed he forgot himself again, and thought only of Ortensia. In his imagination he fancied her already far on her way to Rovigo in the jolting coach with her captors; in the very coach, perhaps, in which he had brought her to Ferrara only last night. He called up her face, and saw it as pale as death; her eyes were half closed and her lips sharp-drawn with pain.
So stood Beltane, unhelmed, staring dazedly from heaving earth to reeling heaven; yet, of a sudden, shook aloft the fragment of his splintered lance and laughed fierce and loud, to behold, 'twixt reeling earth and sky, a great roan stallion that foamed upon his bit 'neath sharp-drawn rein, as, swaying sideways from the lofty saddle, Sir Gilles of Brandonmere crashed to earth, transfixed through shield and hauberk, through breast and back, upon the shaft of a broken lance.
You'd have to strike a light to find it, and I don't want a light now." He was standing on the steps, with her slightly above him, and so close that he heard her sharp-drawn breath. "It has been a pleasant evening," she said, inanely. "I saw you for the first time to-night, Cherry. I think I have begun to know you." Again she felt her heart leap.
Mostyn bit his lip in vexation, as he reached out for the doorknob and turned it cautiously. "Well, it is true, and it has turned the fool's head; he is spending it like water. He is giving a big blow-out to-night, and it is all for your wife, sir your wife." Mostyn made no reply, though his face looked graver; the sharp-drawn lines about his mouth deepened. "You heard what I said, didn't you?"
The race itself was almost a tangible thing ahead of him. Greek Conniston was ready for it. And he dared think, with a sharp-drawn breath and a leaping of blood throughout his whole being, of the golden prize at the end of it for the man who could win that prize. He worked all that day with Rawhide Jones, his left hand upon his reins, his right thrust into his open vest as a rude sort of sling.
Chip, in none the best humor with him, jerked the reins savagely and dug him with his spurs, and Whizzer, resenting the affront, whirled and bounded high in the air. Back down the grade he bucked with the high, rocking, crooked jumps which none but a Western cayuse can make, while Weary turned in his saddle and watched with sharp-drawn breaths. There was nothing else that he could do.
I held my breath, and listened; but all was silent as the grave, and I breathed freely once more. At the same instant, I heard the sound again. It was like a noise of labored breathing deep and sharp-drawn. For a short second, I stood, petrified; not able to move. But now the sounds had ceased again, and I could hear nothing.
This woman to her great credit I say to her great credit has gone away, so as to put herself out of Eustace's reach, until he has recovered his senses." With a sharp-drawn breath Barbara said: "Oh! poor thing!" But on Lady Casterley's face had come an almost cruel look. "Ah!" she said: "Exactly. But, curiously enough, I am thinking of Eustace."
I plunged into the jumble of negroes next door, putting my questions and setting down the answers without even hearing them, my thoughts still back in the clean, bare room behind, wondering whether I should not have been wiser after all to have ignored the sharp-drawn lines and the prejudices of my fellow-countrymen and joined the pick and shovel Zone world. There might have been pay dirt there.
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