"Cowardice!" Christine answered him scornfully. "The word would be better applied to those who deliberately terrify a child. I am astonished at a man taking part in such a vile business."
She was pale with indignation and pity for the boy who trembled in her arms, and in no mood to choose her words.
Saxby shrugged his shoulders with a sort of helpless gesture toward his companion as if to say he had only done as he was told. Mrs. van Cannan gave him a furious glance before returning to Christine.
"Can't you see," she said violently, "that we have sticks here ready to kill the thing, and a revolver if necessary? Not that it is poisonous—if it had bitten that miserable little worm!" She cast a withering glance at Roddy. He shrank closer to Christine, who judged it time to pull him safely from the room to her side on to the veranda.
"There is nothing miserable about Roddy," she said fiercely, "except his misfortune in having a step-mother who neither loves nor understands him."
That blenched the woman at the table. She turned a curious yellow colour, and her golden-brown eyes appeared to perform an evolution in her head that, for a moment, showed nothing of them but the eyeball.
"That will do," she hissed, advancing menacingly upon Christine. "I always felt you were a spy. But you shall not stay prying here another day. Pack your things and go at once."
"Come, come, Mrs. van Cannan," interposed Saxby soothingly; "I am sure you are unjust to Miss Chaine. Besides, how can she go at once? There is nothing for her to travel by until the cart returns from Cradock."
But the woman he addressed had lost all control of herself.
"She goes tomorrow, cart or no cart!" she shouted, and struck one clenched fist on the other. "We will see who is mistress at Blue Aloes!"