“Yes, some tea. I want nothing else.”
And she ascended to her own neat bedroom on the second floor where, after closing the door, she flung herself upon the bed and burst into tears.
Her nerves had been unstrung by the severe ordeal she had gone through. When the maid brought her tea, she dried her eyes and allowed the girl to assist her to change her dusty skirt and torn blouse, and after a good wash and a cup of tea she felt decidedly better and refreshed.
Laura lit a fire, and when it had burnt up Gwen flung herself into her cretonne-covered armchair to rest and to think.
Since she had last sat in that cosy well-remembered room of hers there had been hideous happenings. The past seemed to her all like a bad dream. She shuddered as she recalled it. Even the events of that day hardly seemed clear and distinct. Her recollection of them was hazy, so agitated and anxious had she been. Why she had been so suddenly released from that hateful bondage was also to her a complete mystery.
She was recalling that first interview with the coarse, red-faced man whose name she had not been told: with what little consideration he had treated her, and how he had compelled her to come forth from her stronghold in order to speak with him.
He had asked her many curious questions, the purport of which she could not discern. Some of them concerned her father’s recent actions and movements; some of them concerned the man she loved.
But she was independent, and refused point-blank to answer anything. She defied that man who, in turn, jeered at her helplessness, and so insulted her that the flush of shame rose upon her white cheeks.
“You shall answer me these questions, young lady,” cried the pompous man in firm determination, “or it will be the worse for you!” he added with a look, the real meaning of which she was unable to disguise from herself.
Yet she stood defiant, even though she was helpless in his hands.