"I was not intending to tell you any untruth, Hugh. But—I was not walking with him."
The anger had now gone from her eyes, and she left her hands to lie quietly in his clasp. But she had not forgotten the warm pressure of those other hands in whose keeping they had been that same morning.
"Had you not seen him, Dot?" Hugh asked, looking keenly into her face.
At this her whole nature was up in rebellion, for she could not brook his pursuing the matter farther, after what she had already told him.
"Let go my hands!" she exclaimed angrily. "Let me go! You have no right to question me as to my doings."
He dropped her hands at once, and rising to his feet, turned his back to her, and looked out of the window. A mighty flood of jealousy was surging through his brain; and that which he had so long repressed was struggling hard to uproot itself from the secret depths,—where he was striving to hide it from her knowledge—and burst forth in fierce words from his lips.
Had this hated Britisher dared to steal into the sacred place of the child's heart, which he himself, from a sense of honor, was bound to make no effort to penetrate? The mere suspicion of such a thing was maddening.
Dorothy glanced at him. How big and angry he looked, standing there with tightly folded arms, his lips compressed, and his brows contracted into a deep scowl! How unlike he was to the sunny-faced Hugh Knollys who had been her companion since childhood!
"Don't be angry with me, Hugh," she pleaded softly, venturing timidly to touch his shoulder.
He whirled about so suddenly as to startle her, and she fell back a pace, her wondering eyes staring at the set white face before her.