"You know one scarcely knows what one does at such times, and
it must have been frightfully strange to YOU--and he's been quite
distracted, lest you should have wandered away. Adele, run and tell him
Miss Mallory has been here under the oak all the time."
Rose started--and then fell hopelessly back in her seat. Perhaps it WAS
true! Perhaps he had not rushed off with that awful face and without a
word. Perhaps she herself had been half-frightened out of her reason.
In the simple, weak kindness of her nature it seemed less dreadful to
believe that the fault was partly her own.
"And you went back into the house to look for us when all was over,"
said Mrs. Randolph, fixing her black, beady, magnetic eyes on Rose, "and
that stupid yokel Zake brought you out again. He needn't have clutched
your arm so closely, my dear,--I must speak to the major about his
excessive familiarity--but I suppose I shall be told that that is
American freedom. I call it 'a liberty.'"
It struck Rose that she had not even thanked the man--in the same flash
that she remembered something dreadful that he had said.
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