She spelled out the words with contracted brows; and then for the moment she became still another Sylvia. She tore the missive into bits. She was pale with rage—rage which was none the less obsessing because it had in it the element of terror. Her father dared to suggest such a thing! It would have been bad enough if Fectnor had sent the summons himself; but for her father to unite with him against her in such an affair!
She tried to calm herself, succeeding but illy. “Antonia!” she called. “Antonia!” For once her voice was unlovely, her expression was harsh.
The startled old woman came with quite unprecedented alacrity.
“Antonia, where did you see my father?”
“On the street. He seemed to have waited for me.”
“Very well. You must find him again. It doesn’t matter how long you search. I want you to find him.”
She hurriedly framed a response to that note of her father’s:
“I will not come. Tell Fectnor I never will see him again. He will not dare to harm me.”
As she placed this cry of defiance into an envelope and sealed and addressed it certain words of Harboro’s came back to her. That night of their wedding he had lifted her in his powerful arms and had given her a man’s assurance: “I mean that you’re to have all the help you want—that you’re to look to me for your strength.”
She reasoned shrewdly: Harboro wasn’t the sort of man people would tell things to—about her. They would know what to expect: intense passion, swift punishment.