For this reason,
therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in the
porch to await her return, he was startled by hearing HER voice in the
shadow of the lower porch, accompanied by a hurried tapping against the
door of the old couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would have
moved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with white and parted
lips and vacantly distended eyeballs.
Meantime the voice and muffled tapping had brought the tremulous fingers
of old Forsyth to the door-latch. He opened the door partly; a slight
figure that had been lurking in the shadow of the porch pushed rapidly
through the opening. There was a faint outcry quickly hushed, and the
door closed again. The rays of a single candle showed the two old people
hysterically clasping in their arms the figure that had entered--a
slight but vicious-looking young fellow of five-and-twenty.
"There, d--n it!" he said impatiently, in a voice whose rich depth was
like Josephine's, but whose querulous action was that of the two old
people before him, "let me go, and quit that, I didn't come here to be
strangled! I want some money--money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, for
I've got to be off again before daylight.
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