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It was apparent that she spoke with difficulty. She stood up straight, in a tense attitude, and looked aside. Her voice sounded uneven, like the snapping of a taut string. Her eyelids drooping wearily, she bit her lips, and the fingers of her compressed hand cracked. The mother was ruffled by her outburst; but she understood it, and a sad emotion took possession of her.
"Who do I and mine belong to?" the tense voice went on; "to the devil I suppose! Well, then, Mart Morley, you listen to me now. This child" she turned fiercely toward Molly "is yours, mine and the devil's. You're a lazy lot that left us to starve or live as we could, but the devil has taken a hand in the game, do you hear? I reckon he'll see us through and no thanks to you!
For the moment his blindness was no greater than Blenham's; for a little Blenham would grope and wonder and hesitate and grow tense after the fashion the blind man knew so well. And then at the end, when an end could no longer be delayed, Bill Royce would mete out the long-delayed punishment.
Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and old Fanny. "Charlotte!" she said, coming toward the girl. And at her low, tense tone, Charlotte had begun to cry.
She swerved when she lifted with the waves and rolled until it looked as if she would capsize. Now and then a sea broke over the gunwale and a crouching half-breed desperately threw out the water. Another sat on a beam in the high stern and his pose was strangely tense. But for all Agatha's trust in Thirlwell, it was daunting to watch the laboring craft and the seas that threatened to swamp her.
Like a malevolent gargoyle it glowered out upon the deserted street; a tense, immovable chin rested in a pair of clenched hands, knees supporting the elbows. This desolate, forbidding figure had been there for an hour or more ever since Christine's return from the concert. Not once were the burning eyes removed from the lighted windows across the way.
Long he knelt there, his hands clinching the bedclothes convulsively, even the muscles of his body tense and rigid under the terrible mental strain he was undergoing, while at times his powerful frame shook with agony.
"And I shall remain in the next room." He made a perfunctory salute and strode out. The Queen opened her eyes, waited for one tense instant till the door closed; then she slipped swiftly off the couch. "The door!" she whispered. The woman was across the room in an instant, on tip-toe, and drew the single slender bolt.
The flaming logs lit up a ring of tense, pale faces not one of which, Silvestro saw, would rest content with that. The interrogatories began, a dropping fire of them. "How did you do it?" "With my knife, of course." "Where did you strike?" "Under the ribs. I took him by his great goat's beard, the old dog, and jerked up his head so. Then I drove in between his ribs ping!" Surely that would do?
She had discovered a secret wound. She sat tense, and a quick fear came lest the others might have also seen. She glanced at them furtively. But the argument was still unsettled, the tablecloth between them scored and creased with conflicting sketches. She drew a sharp little sigh of relief. Only she had noticed, and she did not matter.
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