"If you look at me so cold and white, Tess," he moaned, "I shall--I'll--"
Then he sought for her lips and found them, kissing her stormily until she felt a keen sense of terror and physical pain. His passionate insistence carried her completely out of herself for the instant.
"Tess, Tess!" he murmured, "nothing matters now! Don't send me away from you again, sweet."
Tess lay in his arms, mute and unresponsive.
"Say one little kind word to me, Tess," he implored again, brokenly.
But Tess couldn't speak. She felt her tongue burn as if infinitesimal sparks had touched each groove upon it. She could not stay in his arms! Before the world he belonged to another woman. She pushed him away, drew herself from his embrace, and sat down again. Her action brought a fierce ejaculation from the boy's lips.
When Frederick ordered his horse that morning, Madelene had slipped her hand into his.
"May I go with you, dear?" she begged. "Do order my horse, too, won't you?"
He colored to the roots of his hair and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
"I'd rather go by myself," he returned so curtly that Madelene bit her lips to keep back the tears.
Stung with jealousy, the young wife watched her husband ride out under the bare trees to the road beyond. Then she ordered her own horse, and dressed herself quickly.
Affairs between the young couple had reached a crucial point. Madelene's suspicions of Frederick were unusually active. She had it clearly in mind that he had gone to the Skinner hut. All the distance to the lake her face burned. She knew well enough she was doing something unpardonable, but how could she stay calmly at home when stinging jealousy goaded her to action?
She cantered past Kennedy's farm and on down the hill, her thoughts in a turmoil. If Frederick were not with the squatter girl, how happy she'd be! She hadn't formulated an excuse for Tessibel if she found her suspicions incorrect. She'd have to tell her something reasonable. Ah, she would pretend she'd come about the church singing.
Beyond and below the lake lay grey and somber, shadowed by the winter sky. The wind stung her face and tweaked her fingers through her warm gloves. Directly in front of the Young house, she reined in her horse and contemplated it. How much had happened since she had married Frederick, and Ebenezer had married Helen Young--how much to her and to him!
Frederick's conduct had destroyed her illusions about marriage. She could be supremely happy if he would treat her a little more as if she were his wife, more as the husbands of her friends treated them. She rode on again slowly until through the willow trees she saw the smoke curling upward from the chimney of the Skinner shanty. Her heart beat furiously when she slipped from her horse and tied him to a fence post. Intuitively, she felt she'd find her husband with Tessibel Skinner. She walked the rest of the way down the hill, stopped before the hut and looked it over. All without lay dressed in its winter garb, and the small house, save for the smoke, appeared uninhabited.