“No, you were right about that,” David conceded, as Gay, smiling bewilderedly, and still a little dizzy, got to her feet. “John tells me the barn roof has caught!”
“South wing, sir—everything. My God, she is doing it up in style now!” Walker, the chauffeur, said, from the group of watching maids and men in the summer-house doorway. All the night was lighted by the demoniacal glare, banners of flame were being blown and twisted like rags upon the shrieking winds.
“Keep this blanket about you, Gay, and over your head!” David commanded, as they joined the others. “Good-bye, Wastewater!” he added, under his breath. “Do you see that the library wing has collapsed already? You’re looking straight across at the woods beyond! She’s going like tinder.”
“David, but surely that’s the library wing, burning now—the highest point of all!”
“No, that’s the very centre of the house. That’s about where Uncle Roger’s old rooms were. There—that’s your corner, where that jet of fire blew out—that wall will go next!”
Gabrielle shuddered, and shivered with the cold.
“Mother seems—broken,” Sylvia said, at Gay’s shoulder. “She loved the old place!”
“There’s going to be a change in the wind!” Tom muttered. “That river of sparks may be turned this way!”
“A change in the wind——?” Gabrielle echoed, incredulously. For to deduce any hint of a change from the furious gale that was blowing so strongly seemed miraculous to her. Even now the rush of air was so furious that they had almost to shout at times to be heard.
Somewhat sheltered in the black old shabby doorway of the long-unused summer-house, Gabrielle felt David’s arm tight about her shoulders. Was he conscious of it? She did not know. But she was exquisitely aware of it, even under her vertigo, weariness, and excitement, and so reinforced, she might have endured a score of such wild nights.