CHAPTER XVIII
THE DYING LION
“Lily has been taken home,” he said as she walked out with him. “She is safe and will be cared for—so will be your father. I will explain it to you as we drive to Millwood.”
She wondered, but her cheeks now burned so that all her thoughts began to flow back upon herself as a tide, flowing inland, and forgetting the sea of things. Her heart beat faster—she felt guilty—of what, she could not say.
Perhaps the guilt of the sea for being found on the land.
The common mill girls—were they not all looking at her, were they not all wondering, did they not all despise her, her who by birth and breeding should be above them? Her lips tightened at the thought—she who was above them—now—now—they to be above her—poor-born and common as they were—if—if—he betrayed her.
He handed her quietly—reverently even, into the buggy, and the trotters whirled her away; but not before she thought she saw the mill girls peeping at her through the windows, and nodding their heads at each other, and some of them smiling disdainfully. And yet when she looked closely there was no one at the windows.
The wind blew cool. Travis glanced at her dress, her poorly protected shoulders.