thundering so," she replied, mistaking my meaning altogether, "but there
was no conveyance at the station, and so I came on alone. I never knew
Guy was sick. Is he very bad?"

Her perfect composure and utter ignoring of the past provoked me beyond
endurance, and without stopping to think what I was doing, I seized her
arm, and drawing her into an adjoining room, said, in a suppressed
whisper of rage:

"Very bad--I should think so. We have feared and still fear he will die,
and it's all your work, the result of your wickedness, and yet you
presume to come here into his very room--you who are no wife of his, and
no woman, either, to do what you have done."

What more I said I do not remember. I only know Daisy put her hands to
her head in a scared, helpless way, and said:

"I do not quite understand it all, or what you wish me to do."

"Do?" I replied. "I want you to leave this house to-night--now, before
Guy can possibly be harmed by your presence. Go back to the depot and
take the next train home. It is due in an hour. You have time to reach
it."

"But it's so dark, and it rains and thunders so," she said, with a
shudder, as a heavy peal shook the house and the rain beat against the
windows.

I think I must have been crazy with mad excitement, and her answer made
me worse.