Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/214

 Yes; there must be something in environment. The old life had never brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now almost since the first day she had come to Needley —this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden, floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she really was—but what all those around her held her to be—what Mrs. Thornton had said she was—and—

Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her seat—and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.

Thornton, a road-map tacked on a piece of board and propped up at his feet, raised his head, and, self-occupied himself, had apparently not noticed her silence, for he spoke irrelevantly.

"I hope you won't mind if the road is a bit rougher than usual for a few miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it 'rough but passable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten miles and take us back to Needley through Barton's Mills."

"Of course, I don't mind," Helena answered. "How far are we from Needley?"

"About thirty-five miles or so," Thornton replied. "Say, an hour and a half with any kind of going at all. We ought to be back by nine."

Helena nodded brightly and leaned back in her