“Heaven give me strength in this dark hour,” she prayed. “That this thing should happen—and you a Tillotson. Tell me everything, I command you.”
“I was young,” was all he could say. “Nobody told me; I didn’t know.”
“Faugh,” she sneered, towering above him, her face working with wrath. “You might have guessed.”
“But she spoke so respectfully of her father,” sobbed Edwin Dell. “It was . . . that . . . or . . . the streets.”
His aunt scorched him with her outraged eyes.
“Which would Emerson have chosen?” she demanded.
“I was drugged,” he wept.
“Faugh! A likely story! Edwin Dell, put on your goloshes and leave this house.”
He cowered in his chair.
“Tonight? In this blizzard?” he quavered. “Where could I go?”