“You look like the picture of Mother Hubbard’s dog, that Lance is so fond of,” he said, smiling. “Your English must be getting on, or you wouldn’t care for the Daily News. Are you reading the praises of the Norse character?”
As he spoke he leaned over her shoulder to look at the letter which Roy had mentioned; but Swanhild had turned to the inner sheet and was deep in what seemed to her strangely interesting questions and answers continued down three columns. A hurried glance at the beginning showed Frithiof in large type the words, “The Romiaux Divorce Case.”
He tore the paper away from her, crushed it in his hands, and threw it straight into the fire. Swanhild looked up in sudden panic, terrified beyond measure by his white face and flashing eyes, terrified still more by the unnatural tone in his voice when he spoke.
“You are never to read such things,” he said vehemently. “Do you understand? I am your guardian and I forbid you.”
“It was only that I wanted to know about Blanche,” said Swanhild, conscious that, in some way she could not explain, he was unjust to her.
But, unluckily, the mention of Blanche’s name was just the one thing that Frithiof could not bear; he lost his self-control. “Don’t begin to argue,” he said fiercely. “You ought to have known better than to read that poisonous stuff! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
This was more than Swanhild could endure; with a sense of intolerable injury she left the parlor, locked herself into her bedroom, and cried as if her heart would break, taking good care, however, to stifle her sobs in the pillow, since she, too, had her full share of the national pride.
“It is ungenerous of him to hate poor Blanche so,” she thought to herself. “Whatever she has done I shall always love her—always. And he had no right to speak so to me, it was unfair—unfair! I didn’t know it was wrong to read the paper. Father would never have scolded me for it.”
And in this she was quite right; only a very inexperienced “guardian” could have made so great a mistake as to reproach her and hold her to blame for quite innocently touching pitch. Perhaps even Frithiof might have been wiser had not the sudden shock and the personal pain of the discovery thrown him off his balance.
When Sigrid returned in a few minutes she found him pacing the room as restlessly as any wild beast at the Zoo.