"Oh, God! You are hurting me; you are breaking my arm," she gasped.
The door was flung open, and Joe McDonald's sinewy hands clinched like vices on his brother's shoulders.
"Charlie, you're mad, mad as the devil. Let go of her this minute."
The girl staggered backwards as the iron fingers loosed her wrists. "Oh! Joe," she cried, "I am not his wife, and he says I am born—nameless."
"Here," said Joe, shoving his brother towards the door. "Go downstairs till you can collect your senses. If ever a being acted like an infernal fool, you're the man."
The young husband looked from one to the other, dazed by his wife's insult, abandoned to a fit of ridiculously childish temper. Blind as he was with passion, he remembered long afterwards seeing them standing there, his brother's face darkened with a scowl of anger—his wife, clad in the mockery of her ball dress, her scarlet velvet cloak half covering her bare brown neck and arms, her eyes like flames of fire, her face like a piece of sculptured graystone.
Without a word he flung himself furiously from the room, and immediately afterwards they heard the heavy hall door bang behind him.
"Can I do anything for you, Christie?" asked her brother-in-law calmly.
"No, thank you—unless—I think I would like a drink of water, please."
He brought her up a goblet filled with wine; her hand did not even tremble as she took it. As for Joe, a demon arose in his soul as he noticed she kept her wrists covered.