The knock grew louder, and thinking of her mother, she dried her eyes, whisked a powdery bit of chamois skin across them, ran a comb through the waves of her hair, and hastening to the door, she opened it to be confronted by Junior Moreland.
When she saw who it was, Mahala planted her figure stiffly in front of the doorway. Emphatically she shook her head. She said tartly and with stiff lips: “No Moreland is welcome in this house,” and started to close the door.
Junior caught it, pushed it open and stepping inside, leaned against it. He had dressed himself with unusual care. Looking at him with searching eyes of wonder, Mahala saw that never in her life had he appeared to her so unusually handsome, so attractive. But when he opened his lips, he said to her sneeringly: “Had enough yet?”
She stepped back, looking at him in amazement, and then she said deliberately: “You Morelands tortured my father, for how many years I do not know, and then murdered him deliberately. You are now engaged in the process of killing my mother by slow degrees. For all I know you may be able to do the same thing to me, but you sha’n’t do it under the pretence of loving me. If you have determined to do it, if you are strong enough to do it, every one shall know that it is cold blooded.”
This made Junior furious, but he did try to control himself. He said to her in a voice meant to be conciliatory: “Your father was naturally a bookworm. He never should have tried to run a business. Every one who knew him knows that he had no business ability whatever.”
To his surprise Mahala nodded in acquiescence. She said slowly: “I think you are quite right, else your father would not have been able to complicate his business matters as he did. But my father was not the only man to suffer, since the name of Martin Moreland stands for more distress in Ashwater, and throughout the county, than the names of all of the remainder of the wicked men put together.”
Before she knew what was coming, Junior had seized her in his arms. He gathered her to him roughly, repeatedly kissing her, her hair, her shoulders, the hands she thrust out to push him from her. Finally she broke from his hold. She stood before him, looking at him in scorn.
“I wish you could realize,” she said at last, “that your touch is hateful. I feel positively soiled.”
Then Junior lost his self-control. He said to her: “If you won’t marry me, I’ll teach you what it means to be soiled in reality. I’ll put you where the dogs won’t bark at you when you pass.”
Terrified at his strength and so dire a threat, Mahala stepped back and pushed a chair between them. Under cover of this, she lightly ran through the house, opened the front door, and stepped upon the walk where she was in full view of the street, so that Junior was forced to leave the house.