With the increasing sense of her own powerlessness the spirit of revolt in her waxed but the more importunate. Why should she be made the creature of this man’s passions? She seemed to feel again the great fist, swinging with all the brutality of the man’s nature, and crashing into her face. All the ignominies of the past weeks rose up to taunt and madden her. All her hate and loathing waxed fiercer as she thought of her helpless yearning towards Jeffray. She began to struggle and twist in the chair, striving to get her teeth to the knots about her wrist. Dan had fastened them down to the front stretcher of the chair, and wrestle and strain as she would she could not reach them.
What could she do to free herself from the shame and the dread that encompassed her? Scream! Yes, but who would hear her, and who would help her if they heard? Ursula? Poor doddering Ursula! Doubtless she had been locked safely in her cottage, and Bess mistrusted the old woman’s courage when Isaac’s will had been declared law. Incensed the more by her own thoughts, she struggled again and again with the cords, twisting and straining till the oak chair rocked and creaked. The muscles stood out under the brown skin of her forearms. Her bruised lips began to bleed again as she held her breath, struggling and working her body from side to side.
Another hour passed. The bees droned on, the smell of the garden came in upon the breeze. Not a voice reached her from the hamlet. Silence prevailed save for the murmur of the insects, the vague rustling of the leaves, the steady, mocking tick of the old clock against the wall. The woods rolled up before her, their green splendor heightened by the blaze of the June sunlight. The very calm of the place seemed to intensify the passionate despair in her own heart.
Suddenly some new sound drifted to Bess’s ears. She twisted forward in the chair, straining at the cords. Some one was moving towards the cottage; Bess heard the rustle of feet in the long grass. Was it Dan returning, or old Isaac with those pistols in his belt? The footsteps stopped at the garden-gate. Bess could see neither the gate nor the path from where she sat. The latch lifted; some one was coming up the brick-paved path. She heard the sound of breathing, the sound of a hand trying the locked door. For a moment silence held. Then with the rustling of clothes against the wall of the cottage a round-backed figure showed blurred by the sunlight at the window, a hook-nosed face looked in at Bess through the open lattice.