"Hideous! Hideous old wretch!" she said aloud furiously, between shut teeth. "How dared he look at me like that, as if I were--Beast! I hate--I hate--I _hate_ him." Her anger was so uncontrollable that for a moment she could not breathe. It was like a whirlwind, wrenching and tearing her from the soil of contentment into which for so many years her vanity and selfishness had struck their roots. _"But the Lord was not in the wind."_ CHAPTER XVIII When Helena went back to the house, her face was red, and her whole body tingling; every now and then her breath came in a gasp of rage. At that moment she believed that she hated everybody in the world--the cruel, foolish, arrogant world!--even the thought of David brought no softening. And indeed, when that first fury had subsided, she still did not want to see the little boy; that destroying wind of anger had beaten her complacency to the dust, and she could not with dignity meet the child's candid eyes. It was not until the next day that she could find any pleasure in him, or even in the prospect of Lloyd's visit; and when these interests began to revive, sudden gusts of rage would tear her, and she would fall into abrupt reveries, declaring to herself that she would tell Lloyd how she had been insulted! But she reminded herself that she must choose just the right moment to enlist his sympathy for the affront; she must decide with just what caress she would tell him that she meant to leave Old Chester, and come, with David, to live in Philadelphia. (Oh, would Frederick _ever_ die?)... But, little by little, she put the miserable matter behind her, and filled the days before Lloyd's arrival with plans for the few golden hours that they were to be together, when he was to have her "all to himself." But, alas, the plans were all disarranged by David.