"But you know how dreadfully sudden"-- The lie stuck in her throat, and refused to be uttered. "Is it? How blind you must have been! Couldn't you see all summer that I was smashed?" Patty was conscious of a wild desire to strangle her lover, and then fling herself under the wheels of the carriage. She longed to get possession of the whip, and lash the gray span into a gallop. "I am fearfully cold and hungry," she said, feigning a shiver. "Do drive faster." Clarence was ill pleased with the result of his wooing; yet the fact that he had not been absolutely refused made it needful for him to restrain his impatience. He whipped up his horses, and the carriage bowled along the road in a way that at another time would have filled Patty with delight. As it was, she was conscious of a passing thought that it lay in her power to become the mistress of this dashing equipage, and with the thought came fresh self-condemnation. At her gate she was only coldly civil to Clarence, who drove away, and relieved his feelings by swearing at his horses. Patty ran up the path to the cottage like a hunted deer. She wanted to get away from Toxteth, to escape as far as possible from the sound of his voice, from the touch of his hand. On the piazza she encountered Tom Putnam, who had been calling at the house. "How late you are!" he said, taking both her hands in his. "How you tremble! Do you think it prudent to ride in so thin wraps? We have all been worrying about you." "Let me go!" she exclaimed, snatching her hands from his grasp, and half beside herself with shame and self-loathing. "Let me go! I hate you!" And she darted into the house. CHAPTER XXVI. MULLEN HOUSE. It is hardly to be wondered at that the sleep of Tom Putnam was not of the soundest that night. He recalled with painful minuteness the details of his relations with Patience, reviewing every word, every look, every gesture, from the evening of the thunder-storm until her passionate exclamation as she encountered him upon the piazza. It was not strange that he did not understand how that fierce declaration of hatred arose from love. When Patty suddenly found herself face to face with her lover, a sudden inner gleam, as with a lightning's flash, showed her clearly her own heart. With swift and terrible distinctness she saw how deep and strong was her love for him, and the miserable way in which she had been paltering with her own happiness and truth. With this came an equally rapid revulsion of feeling. She rebelled against this man for holding her heart in bondage, for constraining her love. Most of all she hated her own weakness; and upon him she wreaked her self-contempt. Knowing nothing of her mental combat, her lover could only wonder gloomily how he had deserved or provoked this bitterness, and in the watches of the night arraigned himself for a thousand fancied shortcomings which in love are crimes.