new curses and imprecations.  The grasp on her waist relaxed, and seizing her opportunity she strove with the strength of despair to wrest herself from the hands that still held the covering over her head.  Instead, she felt herself lifted up, something struck her sharply on the knee; the next moment she fell violently and all huddled up on—­it might have been the ground, for all she knew; it really was the seat of a carriage.

The shock was no slight one, but she struggled to her feet, and heard, as she tore the covering from her head, a report as of a pistol shot.  The next moment she lost her footing, and fell back.  She alighted on the place from which she had raised herself, and was not hurt.  But the jolt, which had jerked her from her feet, and the subsequent motion, disclosed the truth.  Before she had entirely released her head from the folds of the cloak, she knew that she was in a carriage, whirled along behind swift horses; and that the peril was real, and not of the moment, momentary!

This was horror enough.  But it was not all.  One wild look round, and her eyes began to penetrate the gloom of the closely shut carriage—­and she shrank into her corner.  She checked the rising sob that preluded a storm of rage and tears, stayed the frenzied impulse to shriek, to beat on the doors, to do anything that might scare the villains; she sat frozen, staring, motionless.  For on the seat beside her, almost touching her, was a man.

In the dim light it was not easy to make out more than his figure.  He sat huddled up in his corner, his wig awry, one hand to his face; gazing at her, she fancied, between his fingers, enjoying the play of her rage, her agitation, her disorder.  He did not move or speak when she discovered him, but in the circumstances that he was a man was enough.  The violence with which she had been treated, the audacity of such an outrage in daylight and on the highway, the closed and darkened carriage, the speed at which they travelled, all were grounds for alarm as serious as a woman could feel; and Julia, though she was a brave woman, felt a sudden horror come over her.  None the less was her mind made up; if the man moved nearer to her, if he stretched out so much as his hand towards her, she would tear his face with her fingers.  She sat with them on her lap and felt them as steel to do her bidding.

The carriage rumbled on, and still he did not move.  From her corner she watched him, her eyes glittering with excitement, her breath coming quick and short.  Would he never move?  In truth not three minutes had elapsed since she discovered him beside her; but it seemed to her that she had sat there an age watching him; ay, three ages.  The light was dim and untrustworthy, stealing in through a crack here and a crevice there.  The carriage swayed and shook with the speed at which it travelled.  More than once she thought that the man’s hand, which rested on the seat beside him, a fat white hand, hateful, dubious, was moving,