Mary Willee hid her face in her hands and waited for the storm to break upon her; but it did not break. The room was very quiet. At last she heard Sabine moving about, and she looked up again. Sabine was putting on her hat and coat.
"Sabine! Sabine!" she gasped. "What are you doing!"
Sabine Bob turned quietly and stood for a moment gazing at her without a word. Then she said:
"Mary Willee, you are a bad girl and I can never forgive you; but if Tina Lejeune thinks she is going to marry Thomas Ned, she will find out that she is mistaken. That is a thing that will not happen."
Mary recoiled, terrified, at the pitiless, menacing smile on the other woman's face; but before she could say anything Sabine Bob had stalked out of the house into the darkness.
She climbed the hill to the back road, stumbling often, blinded more by her own fierce emotions than by the winter night; she fought her way westward against the bitter wind that was rising; then turned off by the Old French Road, as it was called, toward the Ponds.
It was ten o'clock at night; stars, but no moon. She saw a shadow approaching in the darkness from the opposite direction: it was a man, short and squarely-built. With a sickening weakness she sank down against the wattle fence at the side of the road. He passed her, so close that she could have reached out and touched him. But he had not seen. She got up and hurried on.
By and by she saw ahead of her the little black bulk of a house from the tiny window of which issued a yellow glow. The house stood directly on the road. She went quietly to the window and looked in. A young girl was sitting by a bare table, her head supported by the palms of her hands. Sabine knew the weak white face and hated it. She made her way to the door and knocked. There was a smothered, startled exclamation; then the rustle of some one moving.
"Who is it?" inquired a timid voice.