"To-morrow then, in New York," and held her hand against his forehead.
Just once she looked back, saw him bent double and stopped.

A prophetic feeling that she was never to hear his voice again seized her in a cold grip,--but she shook it off and put a smile on her face with which to stand before the scandal-mongers.
And there stood Joan, looking as though she had seen a ghost.
XV Alice marched up to her, blazing with anger and indignation.

She was not, at that moment, the gentle Alice, as everybody called her, Alice-sit-by-the-fire, equable and pacific, believing the best of people.

She was the mother-woman eager to revenge the hurt that had been done to one who had all her love.
"Ah," she said, "you're just in time for me to tell you what I think of you." "Whatever you may think of me," replied Joan, "is nothing to what I think of myself." But Alice was not to be diverted by that characteristic way of evading hard words, as she thought it.

She had seen Joan dodge the issues like that before, many times, at school.