“I haven’t done anything!” wailed Claire.
“I’ll make him pay for that!” bellowed Huntington, bringing his fist down on the mantel.
“You mustn’t blame him!” protested Marion hastily. “He was angry at me, and I don’t think he’s as bad as you think he is.”
“Marion!” cried Claire, her eyes widening with wonder.
Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under Claire’s curious gaze. She blushed, at first, merely because she had gone too far in her effort to clear Haig of responsibility for what had occurred that evening; and then the blood stormed into her cheeks as she encountered Claire’s look, and attached a deeper meaning to it than it actually conveyed.
Huntington leaned forward, and gazed suspiciously into Marion’s crimsoned face.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he broke out. “You’d think the girl was in love with this ruffian!”
For an instant there was a silence much like the silence that follows a clap of thunder. Then Marion rose slowly to her feet, quivering, her eyes ablaze.
“Ruffian?” she cried. “If there’s any ruffian it’s––”
She caught herself. She was innately gentle and fastidious, and she could not, without shame, have forced her lips to say the things that she felt in her outraged heart. But she looked at him; and under that 105 look Seth quailed and shrank. What had he said to evoke this luminous hatred? He had not meant––