She had never before seen Red Pepper really angry.  She had been told, again and again since her first meeting with him, by her sister and her sister’s husband, and by the Chesters, that Burns was capable of getting into a red rage in which nobody could influence or calm him, and in which he could or would not control himself.  They invariably added that these hot exhibitions of high temper were frequently over as suddenly as they had appeared, and usually did nobody any harm whatever.  But they hinted that there had been times in the past when Red had said or done that which could not be forgiven by his victims, and that he had more than once alienated people of standing whose good-will he could not afford to lose.

“He keeps a woodpile back of the house,” James Macauley had told her once, laughingly, in the last days before she had married Burns, “where he works off a good deal of high pressure.  If you catch a glimpse of him there, at unholy hours, you may know that there’s murder in his heart—­for the moment.  Art Chester vows he’s caught him there at midnight, and I don’t doubt it in the least.  But—­a woodpile isn’t always handy when a man is mad clear through, and when it isn’t, and you happen to be the one who’s displeased His Pepperiness, look out!  I give you fair warning, smiles and kisses won’t always work with him, much as he may like ’em when he’s sane!”

“I’m not afraid, thank you, Jim,” Ellen had answered, lightly.  “Better a red-hot temper than a white-cold one.”

She thought of the words now, as she saw her husband suddenly turn away from Dr. Van Horn, and march down the walk, ahead of him.  The action was pretty close to rudeness, for it left the elder man in the rear.  Evidently, in spite of his irritation, Burns instantly realized this, for he turned again, saying quickly:  “I beg your pardon, Doctor, but I’ve got a lot of work waiting.”

“Don’t apologize, Doctor,” returned the other, with perfect courtesy.  “We all know that you are the busiest man among us.”

His face, as he spoke, was as pale as Burns’s was high-coloured, and Ellen recognized that here were the two sorts of wrath in apposition, the “red” sort and the “white.”  And looking at Dr. Van Horn’s face, it seemed to her that she still preferred the red.  But as his eyes met hers he smiled the same suave smile which she had seen before.

“Not tired of waiting yet, Mrs. Burns?” he said, as he passed her.  “You must be a restful companion for a man harassed by many cares.”

She smiled and nodded her thanks, with a blithe word of parting,—­so completely can her sex disguise their feelings.  She was conscious at the moment, without in the least being able to guess at the cause of the friction between the two men, of an intense antipathy to Dr. James Van Horn.  And at the same moment she longed to be able to make her husband look as cool and unconcerned as the other man was looking, as he drove away with a backward nod—­which Red Pepper did not return!