“So you have appointed yourself her champion, sir.  No doubt she has been trying her arts on you.  Don’t be a fool, David; stand aside, if she wants to go, let her; women like her can look out for themselves; let her go.”

“Don’t make me forget, sir, that you are my father.  I refuse absolutely to hear the woman I love spoken of in this way.”

The rest looked on in painful silence; they seemed to be deprived of the power of speech or action by the Squire’s vehemence; the wind howled about the house fitfully, and was still, then resumed its wailing grief.

“And you stand there and defy me for that woman in the presence of Kate, to whom you are as good as betrothed?”

“No, no; there is no question of an engagement between David and me, and there never can be,” said Kate, not knowing in the least what to make of the turn that things had taken.

David continued to stand with his arm about Anna.  He had heard the Belden gossip—­a wealthy young man from Boston had been attentive to her, then left the place; jilted her, some said; been refused by her, said others.  It did not make a bit of difference to David which version was true; he was ready to stand by Anna in the face of a thousand gossips.  This was just his father’s brutal way of upholding what he was pleased to term his authority.

“What do you know about her, David?” reiterated the Squire.  “I heard reports, but like you, I would not believe them till I had investigated them fully.  Ask her if she has not been the mother of an illegitimate child, who is now buried in the Episcopal cemetery at Belden—­ask her if she was not known there under the name of Mrs. Lennox?”

“It is true,” said the girl, raising her head, “that I was known as Mrs. Lennox.  It is true that I have a child buried in Belden——­”

David’s arm fell from her, he buried his face in his hands and groaned.  Anna opened the door, a whirling gust flared the lamps and drove a skurrying cloud of snowflakes within, yet not one hand was raised to detain her.  She swayed uncertain for a moment on the threshold, then turned to them:  “You have hunted me down, you have found out that I have been a mother, that I am without the protection of a husband’s name, and that was enough for you—­your duty stopped at the scandal.  Why did you not find out that I was a young, inexperienced girl who was betrayed by a mock marriage—­that I thought myself an honorable wife—­why should your duty stop in hunting down a defenseless girl while the man who ruined her life sits there, a welcome guest in your house to-night?”

She was gone—­David, who had been stunned by his father’s words, ran after her, but the whirling flakes had hidden every trace of her, and the howling wind drove back his cry of “Anna, Anna! come back!”

Anna did not feel the cold after closing the door between her and the Squire’s family; the white flame of her wrath seemed to burn up the blood in her veins, as she plunged through the snowdrifts, unconscious of the cold and storm.  She had no words in which to formulate her fury at the indignity of her treatment.  Her native sweetness, for the moment, had been extinguished and she was but the incarnation of wronged womanhood, crying aloud to high Heaven for justice.