From the wan spiritless creature that she usually was, Grace flashed into a wild passion of anger. Often before she had reminded Rosamund of a sodden leaf, wind-blown and colorless; now she was a flame, vivid, devouring, like the hot blasts that mow down the mountain forests.
"I'll KILL anyone that harms ye!" she cried; and raising her voice to a shriek called to the woods that hid the thrower of the stone:
"Come out! Come out in the open! Coward! Ye coward! Come out here and let yerself be seen!"
A jeering laugh answered, and Grace would have sprung in pursuit; but Rosamund grasped her.
"No, no!" she cried. "Don't, Grace! Don't! Let him go!"
The mountain woman, panting, fiery, would have broken away from the restraining hands; but Rosamund, inspired, cried:
"You wouldn't leave me here alone?"
And as a forest creature, quick to defend her young, is quick to caress, Grace forebore vengeance to hold her friend in a closer embrace.
"He struck ye! You come up here to live with us, and make friends with us, like Doctor Ogilvie, and they go and say you spy out on them! Oh—" her voice echoed from the mountains—"I'll KILL anyone that harms ye!"
"Don't say that! Perhaps he did not mean to——"