not sleep a wink otherwise, she said; and when Abby went downstairs the room seemed cold, and she thought how she missed Lizzie, and wondered if it wouldn’t be pleasant to keep this pretty creature for a spell, and do for her a little, and make her up some portion of clothing.  There was a real good dress of Lizzie’s, hanging this minute in the press upstairs:  she had a good mind to take it out at once and see what could be done to it; perhaps—­and Abby did not go to bed very early herself that night.

CHAPTER IV.

Possession.

Jacques De Arthenay went home that night like a man possessed.  He was furious with himself, with the strange woman who had thus set his sober thoughts in a whirl, with the very children in the street who had laughed and danced and encouraged her in her sinful music, to her own peril and theirs.  He thought it was only anger that so held his mind; yet once in his house, seated on the little stool before his fire, he found himself still in the street, still looking down into that lovely childish face that lifted itself so innocently to his, still smitten to the heart by the beauty of it, and by the fear that he saw in it of his own stern aspect.  He had never looked upon any woman before.  He had been proud of it,—­proud of his strength and cleverness, that needed no meddlesome female creature coming in between him and his business, between him and his religion.  He had not let his hair and beard grow, knowing nothing of such practices, but in heart he had been a Nazarite from his youth up,—­serving God in his harsh, unloving way; loving God, as he thought; certainly loving nothing else, if it were not the dumb creatures, to whom he was always kind and just.  And now—­what had happened to him?  He asked himself the question sternly, sitting there before the cheerful blaze, yet neither seeing nor feeling it.  The answer seemed to cry itself in his ears, to write itself before his eyes in letters of fire.  The thing had happened that happens in the story books, that really comes to pass once in a hundred years, they say.  He had seen the one woman in the world that he wanted for his own, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish.  She was a stranger, a vagabond, trading in iniquity, and gaining her bread by the corruption of souls of men and children; and he loved her, he longed for her, and the world meant nothing to him henceforth unless he could have her.  He put the thought away from him like a snake, but it came back and curled round his heart, and made him cold and then hot and then cold again.  Was he not a professing Christian, bound by the strictest ties?  Yes!  How she looked, standing there with the children about her, the little slender figure swaying to and fro to the music, the pretty head bent down so lovingly, the dark eyes looking here and there, bright and shy, like those of a wild creature so gentle in its nature that it knew no fear.  But he had taught her fear! yes, he saw it grow under his eyes, just as the love grew in his own heart at the same moment.