Eliza's breath caught in her throat, and she felt so strangely stirred that she rose abruptly and went into the house.
CHAPTER XXI
THE SINGER
The combination of at last having a definite aim in life, and the cutting rebuke received in his father's library, had caused Edgar Fabian to wake up.
On the hot morning when he took the train for Portland, he even looked a little pale from the unwonted vigil of the night before. As he tossed on his bed in the small hours, he had fretted at the heat, but it was not temperature that made him survey the causes for his father's drastic words; and he recalled the emotion which Kathleen had not been able to conceal with a sort of affectionate dismay. Kathleen was a good sort, after all. She had worked for him, he knew, and mitigated the situation so far as she could.
"Father wants to be shown, does he?" he thought, clenching his teeth. "Well, I'll show him. I will."
His soul was still smarting when he boarded the train in the breathless station and the porter carried his suitcase to his chair in the day coach.
A group of girls were standing about the neighboring seat, but he did not regard them. One of them observed him, and for her the thermometer suddenly went up ten degrees more.