THE STEADFAST HEART
She stamped her foot, for a moment seeming like her old elfin self. “I hate you… I despise you,” she cried, and then not waiting for him to obey, she fled from the room—out of his life. It seemed as if leaving that room was in effect a bursting out of his life into a freedom of her own. Up the stairs she flew to the sanctuary of her room, there to sit down, cold, tense, gasping. She did not sob; she shed no tear, but with hands clutching her temples remained with eyes fixed on vacancy for minute after minute, until the minutes strung together into hours…. Mary Browning summoned her to supper…. She would not answer.
So it was not until the calmer next day that she was told of Judge Crane’s death, and of the matters which contributed to it—and of Angus Burke’s part therein. She listened apathetically until Angus’s name was spoken; then she listened tensely, apprehensively, with eyes that brightened or darkened under the play of her emotions.
“What—what do people say of him?… Do they blame him?” she asked.
“Blame him!” Mary Browning’s voice lifted with her astonishment at the question. “The idea! Rainbow has made a hero of him.” Then, as the irony of it struck her afresh, “Because he saved Rainbow’s money,” she said with a trace
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