"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do."
Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow."
VIII.
Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had come over her.
Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came back. Then he walked to the lodge to report.
"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him before he could get a word out.
"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on his way back to Canady, again."
"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! Send for him! Bring him back, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him I said to come back! What are you standing there for?"
She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for the doctor.