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"Good God!" said Ambrose. "By whom?" "We do not know." "He's not he's not " Ambrose's tongue balked at the dreadful word. She shook her head. "A dangerous wound, not necessarily fatal. We can't tell yet." "You have no idea who did it?" Colina schooled herself to give him a coherent account. The sight of her forced calmness, with those eyes, was inexpressibly painful to Ambrose. "No.
Strange said that would fix John Gaviller, all right. He told Watusk that the police would let the people off easily because, as he said, my father had treated them so badly." Colina drew a long breath to steady herself. "They talked about the chances of my father's dying," she went on. "He was very sick at that time. Mr. Strange suggested to Watusk that it wouldn't take much to finish him.
She hissed the words. Once more she sobbed wildly and then she broke into speech again. "Oh, I want to go somewhere and hide; somewhere where he'll never find me, where I'll be safe from him." "What's the matter with Colina?" said Bob Flick suddenly. "He'll never come there. A good reason why!" Pearl became perfectly still.
But the young man made no move to serve himself. Indeed he sat at the other side of the rock-table and produced his pipe. "Why don't you eat?" demanded Colina. "There is plenty of time," he said, blushing. "But why wait?" "Well there's only one knife and fork." "Is that all?" said Colina coolly. "We can pass them back and forth can't we?"
He could have bitten his tongue. Still, he reflected sullenly, it was bound to come. You can't make black white, however tenderly you describe it. Colina sprang to her feet. "Unfair!" she cried. "That is to say a cheat! You can say it while he is lying up-stairs desperately wounded!" "Colina, be reasonable," he implored. "The fact that he is suffering can't make a wrong right."
A dangerous softness began to work in her breast; he was so boyish, so clumsy, so anxious to entertain her fittingly his unconsciousness of her nearness was such a transparent assumption. Colina was alarmed by her own weakness. She looked resolutely at the dog. He was a mongrel black and tan, bigger than a terrier, and he had a ridiculous curly tail.
The boy started, and turned a pair of stricken eyes in her direction. His ruddy cheeks paled a little. Manifestly she wielded a power over him too. "Are you against me?" she murmured sadly. This was the same tone she had just used to Ambrose. His lip curled. "He has to do what I tell him or be knocked on the head," he said quickly. Colina ignored this.
She, who had humiliated him so many times was now powerless before him, let her rage as she might. He was only human. Seeing the cold smile Colina felt as if the ground was suddenly cut from under her. Her cheeks paled, and the imperious blaze of her eyes was slowly dimmed. When the bolt of passion is launched without effect, a horrible blankness faces the passionate one.
"But father said one-fifty." "Your father is wrong in this instance." Colina frowned ominously. "How do you know?" she demanded. "I know the price of flour at the different posts," he said deprecatingly. "I know the risks that must be allowed for and the fair profit one expects." "Do you mean to say that father is unfair?" she cried. He was silent. An unlucky word had betrayed him.
"Listen!" he commanded in a tone that silenced her. "As I bade her good-by on the shore she asked me to. She had just risked death to get me out, remember worse than death perhaps. What should I have done? Answer me that!" Colina refused to meet the question. Her assumption of indifference was very painful to see. She was not beautiful then. "Don't ask me," she said with a sneer.
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