And there darted into poor Bram’s heart a jealous, mad fear that was like a poison in his blood. He clenched his teeth, he shook his fists in the air; again the wild, fierce passion which had swept over him at Christian’s stabbing words seized him and possessed him.
He turned quickly, as if to start in pursuit of Chris, when a low sound, a cry, stopped him, turned him as if into stone.
For, at a little distance from him, between where he stood and the retreating figure half-way down the hill, stood Claire.
An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him.
CHAPTER XII. A MODEL FATHER.
Dark as the night was, the moon being so thickly obscured by clouds that she never showed her face except through a flying film of vapor, Claire seemed to detect something alarming in Bram’s attitude, something which caused her to pause as she was running up the hill towards him.
At last she stopped altogether, and they stood looking each at the figure of the other, motionless, and without speaking.
As for Bram, he felt that if he tried to utter a single word he should choke. He could not understand or analyze his own feeling; he did not well know whether his faith in her innocence and purity remained intact. All he knew, all he felt, as he looked at the little creature who seemed so pitifully small and slight as she stood alone on the hillside, wrapt tightly in a long cloak, but shivering in the night air, was that his whole heart was sore for her, that he ached for pity and distress, that he did not know what he should say, what he could do, to comfort and console her.
At last she seemed to take courage, and came a few steps nearer.