"So!" he called in his thick voice and with that debauched gallantry that marked him, "So! it is Mam’selle’s bastard dressed and ready to skip out as her damned father did before her, leaving the Mam’selle to make the most of the broken bits. Curse ye, for what ye are!" The veins swelled in Gavot’s face, a confused, bestial desire for revenge on somebody, somehow, possessed him. "Ye’ve taken all she had to give, as your father did before ye, blast him! And now, like him, ye kick her out of your way. Her, who spent herself." The words were scorching into Donelle’s soul, but they numbed sensation as they went. It was later the hurt would come! Now, there was but one thing to do, pass the beast in the road and get behind the walls of safety. And so Donelle darted forward so suddenly that Gavot staggered aside in surprise. She gave him one horrified look and was gone! No one saw her enter the house. She was breathing hard, her face was like a dead face, set and waxen. In the great hall was a book stand. On it was a dictionary. Donelle was repeating over and again in her mind a word. A strange, fearful word, she must know about that—word. It would explain something, perhaps. The trembling hands found it, the wide eyes read it once—twice—three times. Slowly, then, the heavy feet mounted the shallow stairs. As old, blind Revelle used to grope in the upper hall, so Donelle groped now. She reached her room, closed the door and locked it. Then she sat down by the window and began to—suffer. The safe ground upon which she had trodden for the last few years crumbled. At last she managed to reach St. Michael’s. Yes, she remembered St. Michael’s, but how long she had been there before Jo found her she could not remember! But it was clear: Jo, not her father, had put her there. Jo had made up the sad story to save her, Donelle! She bore Jo’s name, and that was to save her, too. And her father had deserted poor Mamsey long ago and she had made the most of the bits that were left! That is what the horrible man had said. And they had all known, always. That was why people never came to the little white house; that was why Jo had put her in the Walled House, to save her. And Jo had stayed outside as she always had done, outside, making the most of the bits! At last, a wild, hot fury smote the girl, a kind of fury that resented the love that placed her in a position which unfitted her for the only part she could decently play. Of course they must have realized that she would know some day, and have to give up! She could not go on with the sham and be happy. They had defrauded her of life while thinking they had saved her for life. It was cruel, wicked! The yellow eyes blazed and the slender hands clenched. "What have they done to me?" she moaned.