With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her.

Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot
his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish
petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his
vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare
insult.

"How dare you!" she gasped.

Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw
herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him.
Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows
where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this
insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him eat
dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again--never so
long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent Southern
blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that she did
not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father or to
her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them. And it
was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult interfere
with her external duties.

As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the
bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing-table dabbing with a
kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began
streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had
already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the
waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official