But the man's feeling had overmastered his speech. His body shook, his face was purple with the vehemence of anger. He lifted his hand as if to call down an imprecation when words had failed him, then abruptly turned, unwilling to trust himself to further speech, and made for the outside door. It closed behind him with a bang that left the key rattling in the lock.
Perhaps this noise and the sound of the Elder's clumping, heavy feet as they went down the steps, prevented the minister from hearing the chugging of a motor-car as it was brought to a stop in front.
Elder Burbeck, hurrying directly across the street to relieve his feelings by getting away quickly from what was now a house of detestation, almost ran into the huge black shape drawn up before the curb. He backed away and lunged around the corner of the car too quickly to notice the figure that emerged from it, or his emotions might have been still more hotly stirred.
Hampstead, sitting at his desk, trying to think calmly of this new danger which threatened him, and to reflect upon the irony of the circumstance by which the father of the man and the husband of the mother he was risking everything to protect, should become the self-appointed Nemesis to hurl him from his pulpit and wrest the secret from his lips, heard faintly the ring at the front door, heard the door close, and an exclamation from his sister in the hall, followed by silence which, while lasting perhaps no more than a few seconds, was quite long enough for him to forget, in the absorption of his own thoughts, that some one had entered the house. Hence he started with surprise when the inner door was opened, and Rose appeared, her white, strained features expressing both fright and hate. She closed the door carefully behind her and whispered hoarsely: "That—that woman is here!"
