"Thanks, Mr. Imason, I'll look for him. You'll be all right till mamma comes?" "Oh yes, I shall be all right, thanks, Anna." He smiled still. Anna gave him another look of defiance. "I intend to go my own way; I know what I'm about. I don't care a pin what you think." The glance seemed to Grantley as eloquent as Lord Burghley's nod. And no more than Lord Burghley did she spoil its effect by words. She gave it to Grantley full and square, then turned on her heel and swung jauntily out of the room. Grantley's smile vanished. He screwed up his lips as if he had tasted something rather sour. CHAPTER XXIII A THING OF FEAR Grantley Imason had intended to go down to Milldean that same evening, but a summons from Tom Courtland reached him, couched in such terms that he could not hesitate to obey it. He sought Tom at his club the moment he received the message. Tom had been sent for to his own house in the morning, and had heard what had happened there. He had seen the wounded child and the other two terrified little creatures. Suzette Bligh gave him her account. The doctor told him that Sophy was no longer in danger, but that the matter was a grave one--a very serious shock and severe local injury; the child would recover with care and with quiet, but would always bear a mark of the wound, an ineffaceable scar. That was the conclusion, half good, half bad, reached after a night of doubt whether Sophy would not die from the violence and the shock. "Did you see your wife?" Grantley asked. "See her? I should kill her if I saw her," groaned Tom. "But--but what's being done?" "She's in her room--she's been there ever since it happened. Suzette's seen her--nobody else. Nobody else will go near her. Of course, while there was a doubt about Sophy--well, the doctor made it a condition that she should confine herself to her room till the thing took a definite turn. I hope she's frightened at last. I don't know what to do. The woman ought to be hanged, Grantley." But wrath and horror at his wife were not the only feelings in Tom's mind; the way the thing had happened raised other thoughts. He was prostrate under the sense that the fury which had smitten poor little Sophy had been aimed at him; his acts had inspired and directed it. He had made his children's love for him a crime in their mother's eyes. All his excuses, both false and real, failed him now. His own share in the tragedy of his home was heavy and heinous in his eyes. "I ought to have remembered the children," he kept repeating desperately. He ought to have stayed and fought the battle for and with them, however hard the battle was. But he had run away--to Mrs. Bolton, and left them alone to endure the increased fury of Harriet's rage. "I've been a damned coward over it," he said, "and this is what comes of it, Grantley."