She lifted one hand, warningly. "You can teach me to distrust no one but yourself, Frank; and please don't perpetually talk of me as some unsophisticated school girl. I am twenty-one, nearly as old as you, my child,—old enough, certainly, to form my own judgment of people and things. Don't let's quarrel, Frank; you know I have been taught self-reliance, and never submit to dictation."
"As the queen pleases;" he lifted his hat with a graceful gesture. "Good-morning, Constance," and he turned and strode rapidly away.
"Frank."
He stopped and turned toward her, but did not retrace his steps.
"Are you really going, a la Don Quixote?"
"I really am," gravely.
He lifted his hat once more, and without uttering a word, resumed his rapid walk down the graveled footpath. Reaching the entrance to the grounds he paused, leaning for a moment against a stone pillar of the gateway; his hands were clenched until the nails left deep indentations in the flesh; his face was ghastly and covered with great drops of perspiration, and, whether the look that shone from his glittering dark eyes betokened rage, or despair, or both, an observer could not have guessed.
Meanwhile, Constance stood as he had left her, gazing after him with a mingled expression of annoyance and regret.
"It was very ungracious of me," she thought, half penitently, "but there's no other way with Frank, and his love-making annoys me exceedingly, especially since Aunt Honor's discovery. How she detests him, and Aunt Honor is too easy to lavish her hate upon many."
As if conjured up by her words, Mrs. Aliston appeared at the window.