So the months went by, and the time drew nearer, and all seemed more peaceful at Cloom than it had ever been.  One day Phoebe happened to be alone; Ishmael and John-James were in the fields, and Phoebe lay on a plush sofa in the parlour.  Ishmael had bought that sofa for her in Penzance when she admired its glossy crimson curves.  She had not been at all grateful; she had merely told him that he bought it, as he did everything else for which she expressed a wish, because he wanted to do everything possible to ensure a healthy and happy child, and there was enough of truth in her accusation to justify it.  Now she lay upon the sofa, staring at the mahogany arm that ran along one side of it and wishing that she were dead or that Archelaus would go away and not torment her with his taunts and his kisses—­his whole presence that made her feel so helpless.  While she lay there thus thinking he came in, walking straight into the hall as of right, whistling carelessly; and she heard his stick, flung against the wall, go sliding and clattering down upon the stone flags.

The next moment he was in the room and standing looking down at her with a smile.  She did not move, but lay looking back at him like a small bird stricken motionless and staring beneath a hawk.  Wanda, who was curled up by her feet, growled softly.  What strange twist it was in Archelaus, what sardonic cruelty, inherited perhaps from the old Squire, that made him take pleasure in tormenting the helpless Phoebe it would have been hard to say.  Though always latent in him, it may have been waked to activity by the wound on his head which had left the scar.  Some nice balance may have been overset in his brain, though there was bitterness enough in his sense of grudge to stimulate him to a perpetual nagging at this vulnerable part of Ishmael.  He had lately discovered a new way to frighten her; in addition to his passionate urgings of what he called his love, he vowed that he would not be able to bear his life much longer, that in losing Cloom he had been sent out to wander the earth a disappointed man, but in losing her he had lost all that had made his life worth living.  He threatened to kill himself, with so many picturesque details and so much grim emphasis, that there were moments when he could almost have deceived himself, let alone poor simple Phoebe.  His feeling for her had been of the most animal even at its strongest, but he had to the full the primitive instinct for possession; he had made her his woman, and, though he might have felt a mere blind jealousy if she had married any other man, to find her taken by Ishmael, the younger brother who had dispossessed him of all, awoke in him a surge of anger stronger than any emotion he had ever known.

He stooped down and deliberately took a long kiss from her mouth, hitting the back of his hand against Wanda’s sensitive nose to stop her growling.  She whimpered and slunk off the sofa, and Archelaus helped her departure with his boot.  Phoebe was too taken up with his cruelty to herself to reproach him on behalf of the dog.