“Shut up—whoever you are! Do you want to give the whole thing away?”
His grip on her arm dragged her back into the shadow. She saw a light flash up and go out in Maybelle’s room, the movement of a window-curtain there. The man beside her saw it, too. But now there was noise in the house. He loosed his hold on her arm and backed away toward his pony. Hilda stood where she was and looked while the house over there became all lit up. What should she do? Slowly she went toward the side door, and, as she stood hesitating there, some one tore it open and stood in it—Colonel Lee Marchbanks, a bathrobe pulled on over his night-clothes.
“What the devil’s this?”
“Oh, Hilda!” That was Mrs. Marchbanks, following him, getting ahead of him and taking hold of her. Fayte came from somewhere. Miss Ferguson was on the porch. The lights from the windows flickered over their faces. The sound of galloping hoofs came from the trail—two ponies, plainly.
“Who were those people?” the colonel demanded.
“Only one people, I guess,” Fayte explained jeeringly, when she didn’t answer. “Masters brought a led pony for her.”
“Masters? Was that Pearse Masters?”
“Let me pass, Colonel Marchbanks.” Hilda pushed by, the rest of them trailing after her.
In the hall they all came together, and the colonel, who had tripped on one of his flapping slippers and come up angrier than ever, exploded,
“You ought to be ashamed, Hilda! That young hound—here on my place—after he’d been as good as ordered off of it—you dressed and ready to run away with him! Oh, you can’t lie out of it, young lady; any fool could see what was up. May—” Hilda saw that Maybelle was halfway down the stairs, a kimono pulled on, one bedroom slipper and one riding boot, which latter nobody but herself seemed to notice—“May, go back and step into this girl’s room; see if she isn’t already packed to leave.”