"What's the matter?" demanded Captain Bob. "Something's the matter!"
Old Miss, who had not clearly caught the Colonel's words, yet felt the tension and put in an authoritative foot. "What have you done now, Hagar? Who's been writing to you? What is it, Colonel?"
Ralph, in his riding-clothes, coming through the hall from the back where he had just dismounted, felt the sultry hush. "What's happened? What's the matter, Hagar?"
"Get me a glass of water, Serena!" breathed the Colonel. He still held the letter.
"My dear friend, let me fan you!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand, and moved to where she could see the offending epistle. "VOTES FOR—oh, Hagar, you surely aren't one of those women!"
Miss Serena, who had flown for the water, returned. The Colonel drank and the blood receded from his face. The physical shock passed, there could be seen gathering the mental lightning. Miss Serena, too, read over his shoulder "VOTES— ... Oh, Hagar!"
Hagar laughed—a cool, gay, rippling sound. "Why, how round-eyed you all are! It isn't murder and forgery. Is the word 'rebellion' so strange to you? May I have my letter, grandfather?"
The Colonel released the letter, but not the situation. "Either you retire from such a position and such activities, or you cease to be granddaughter of mine—"
Old Miss, enlightened by an aside from Mrs. LeGrand, came into action. "She doesn't mean that she's friends with those brazen women who want to be men? What's that? She says she's going to work with them? I don't believe it! I don't believe that even of Maria's daughter. Going around speaking and screaming and tying themselves to Houses of Parliament and interrupting policemen! If I believed it, I don't think I'd ever speak to her again in this life! Women Righters and Abolitionists!—doing their best to drench the country with blood, kill our people and bring the carpetbaggers upon us! Wearing bloomers and cutting their hair short and speaking in town-halls and wanting to change the marriage service!—Yes, they do wear bloomers! I saw one doing it in New York in 1885, when I was there with your grandfather. And she had short hair—"