"You cruel woman," she said, as if impersonally. But Gladys perceived in a moment that she had in mind her own arraignment, as if another were taxing her with a misdeed. "In this bitter black night, in this furious ice-storm, and you did not forbid it! You did not explain your need. You summoned him to risk his life, _his life_, that he might something the earlier offer his fallible opinion, perhaps worth no more than that bit of stone! You would not wait till daylight--you would not wait one hour. You cruel woman! Already you had the best of him, his heart, to throw away at a word as if it were naught--merely a plaything, a tawdry gaud--the best and tenderest and noblest heart that ever beat!--and for a silly quarrel, and for your peevish vanity, you consented to humiliate his honest pride and to hold him up to ridicule, jilted on his wedding-day. And but that he is so brave and genuine and fine of fibre, he would never have had the courage to hold up his head again. But even the basest of the yokels and groundlings could not make merry over the cozening of so noble a gentleman! And now, because of your faith in his magnanimity, you summon him forth in an ice-storm at your 'utmost need,' all careless of his suffering, at the risk of his life. And he, fool that he is, without even a question, regardless of all that has come and gone--or, more foolish still, forgiving and forgetting--obeys your behest! You have taken all he had left, you cruel woman!--his life, this time, his life, _his life_!" Gladys literally cowered under this storm of words, as if the pitiless hail had beaten on her own head. But as Lillian, her arms outstretched, her voice broken into shrill cries, rushed to the door, Mrs. Briscoe sprang forward, caught her arm, and sought to detain her. "What are you going to do, Lillian?" "To raise the country-side, the county--to search for all that the storm and the floods and that baneful woman have left of him!" She broke away hastily from the restraining clutch of Gladys, who, following her closely, saw her reel backward as if in shrinking affright from a shadowy figure standing in the dim hall. X. Julian Bayne, his long coat covered with snow and jingling with icicles, his chill face scarlet with cold, his lips emitting a cloud of visible breath, his eyes intent beneath the brim of his frost-rimmed hat, stood gazing as if petrified by the strange scene he had witnessed just enacted within, the strange words he had overheard. "What is all this?" he cried at length. "Did you think I couldn't make it?" Then to Lillian specially, as he took her hand, "Am I late?" he asked solicitously. "I made all the speed I could. I hope I haven't killed the horse."