As for Adele, her face was ghastly.
With crude, uncontrolled venom the Woodland Girl's aunt plunged into the emergency. "Adele," she cried shrilly, "I think you owe your fiancé an explanation! You promised us faithfully last year that you would never, never see Mr. Baird again—and now to-night our chauffeur saw you steal out to the street corner to meet him—like a common shop-girl. And you dare to bring him back—to my house! What have you to say for yourself?"
For the fraction of a moment Adele Reitzen's superb beauty straightened up to its full majestic height, and all the love-pride that was in her white, white flesh flamed gloriously in her face. Then her sleek, prosperous, arrogant city lover stepped suddenly forward where the yellow light struck bleakly across his shrewd, small eyes and his thin, relentless mouth.
"I should be very glad, indeed, to hear what you have to say," he announced, and his voice was like a nicked knife blade.
Flush by flush by flush the red glory fled from Adele Reitzen's face. Her throat began to flutter. Her knees crumpled under her. Fear went over her like a gray fog.
With one despairing hand she reached back to the Woodland Girl. "Oh, tell them it was you," she whispered hotly. "Oh, tell them it was you." Her scared face brightened viciously. "It was you—you know! Tell them—oh, tell them anything—only save me!"
The Woodland Girl's eyes were big with horror. She started to speak, she started to protest, but before the jumbled words could leave her lips Adele Reitzen turned to the others and blurted out hysterically:
"Surely I can't be expected to keep even a love-secret under these—distressing circumstances. It was Chloe who went out to the street corner to-night—like a common shop-girl—to meet Brian Baird. She wore my cloak on purpose to disguise her."
Like the blaring scream of a discordant trumpet, the treacherous, flatted truth crashed into the Woodland Girl's startled senses, and the man in the shape of a sagging willow cross started up and cried out, "My God!"
For a second the Woodland Girl stood staring into his dreadful, chaotic face, then she squared her shoulders and turned to meet the wrathful, contemptuous surprise in her uncle's and aunt's features.