Evidently this was the appointed hour and Brand was keeping his tryst. Nance seized her sister’s hand and pulled her back into the shadow. Linda’s eyes had grown large and bright. She struggled to release herself.
“What are you doing, Nance?” she cried. “Let me go! Don’t you see he wants me?”
The elder sister’s grasp tightened.
“My dear, my dear,” she pleaded, “this is madness! Linda, Linda, my darling, listen to me. I can’t let you go on with this. You’ve no idea what it means. You’ve no idea what sort of a man that is.”
The young girl only struggled the more violently to free herself. She was like a thing possessed. Her eyes glittered and her lips trembled. A deep red spot appeared on each of her cheeks.
“Linda, child! My own Linda!” cried Nance, desperately snatching at the girl’s other wrist and leaning back, panting against the trunk of a pine.
“What has come to you? I don’t know you like this. I can’t, I can’t let you go.”
“He wants me,” the girl repeated, still making frantic efforts to release herself. “I tell you he wants me! He’ll hate me if I don’t go to him.”
Her fragile arms seemed endowed with supernatural strength. She wrenched one wrist free and tore desperately at the hand that held the other.
“Linda! Linda!” her sister wailed, “are you out of your mind?”