Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/59

The Iron Age With one sickening flash the truth dawned on Peggy. Her uncle! Her uncle! Her heart jumped up into her throat, and in her agony she tore the lace Susette had sewn so carefully on her dress—sewn on for him! The first petal had fallen from the rose of her childhood.

"Why, Peggy, dear, what is it?" asked her mother in alarm.

Peggy did not and could not answer. A new and terrible sense of desertion and loneliness was eating at her heart. A blinding mist came before her eyes, and, to her unutterable shame, she wept—broke down and cried like a baby before Ali Baba and all the others.

She shook off the arm her mother had slipped about her, pushed over the cream pitcher, flung her own pink plate on the floor, turned from the table and fled from the room. She did not care where, so long as it was out of the house and out of his sight.

"How—how extraordinary!" gasped Ali Baba. 47