Free Maris by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

duty!"
    It was very still on the line. If anybody were listening in, they certainly didn't dare to breathe. Then Maris said quite calmly, "Well, I'm doing my duty, and I'll not be at the dinner. I'm sorry!" And she hung up.
    As Maris turned away again from the telephone, there were angry tears in her eyes. She felt outraged that Tilford's relatives were insisting upon her attendance at all festivities when she was in great anxiety. It seemed fairly inhuman. Just to save themselves embarrassment!
    Suddenly she saw it all. They were ashamed of an alliance with plain people like the Mayberrys who didn't live on the Hill, nor own an estate, nor ride in a limousine. They didn't want to explain who was the mother of their son's fiancée. They wouldn't own that they felt that way, of course, for they knew the Mayberrys were an old, fine family, even if they hadn't much money. But it became just as plain as day to her that they intended, just as soon as the wedding was over, to separate her from her own family and ignore them entirely. They meant she should be absorbed into their family and become a Thorpe!
    All at once a great wave of hate for them all came over her so that she was quite startled and amazed at herself. She had never knowingly hated anybody in her life before. Tears of helpless rage poured into her eyes and down her face.
    The telephone was in a little hall closet, which Merrick had fitted up with a light overhead, a shelf for the phone, and a single pane of glass in the panel of the door.
    As Maris came out, she was aware of a shadow falling across the hall floor from outside the door, and as she brushed the tears away from her eyes, the shadow moved and had become a man standing at the front door just outside the screen.
    He was tapping gently on the door with the tips of his fingers. It was Lane Maitland.
    "I didn't want to ring the bell lest I would disturb the invalids," he explained in a very low tone. "I just stepped over to say that the detention camp is in full action and the crew seem very well pleased with arrangements. They are scrubbing up for supper now and sent me over to say that they will stay there till further orders from you. I am detailed to call Merrick to bring over a duffel bag with night things and toothbrushes and so on. Will the arrangement please Your Honor?"
    He was smiling and utterly ignoring the tears on her face, which she knew he could not help but see, and in spite of herself, she smiled back.
    "Don't tell me those boys thought of toothbrushes themselves!" she said with a hysterical giggle, openly digging her knuckles into her eyes to stop the flow of tears.
    "Well, perhaps they didn't just go into the details," Maitland said, grinning, and suddenly he became grave.
    "The patients aren't any worse, are they?" he asked anxiously, taking obvious notice of her weeping now, which his kind tone only seemed to make uncontrollable.
    "No," she said, shaking her head and flipping away those unmanageable tears with the tips of her fingers, "not that I know of. It's not any worse than it was, I guess. But--well--I guess I'm just plain mad!" She gave a little hurt laugh. "I've been talking with some people who don't understand! Who won't understand! Who only think of themselves!"
    "There are lots like that, aren't there?" he agreed. "And it's maddening. But when I get like that, I like to remember what my mother used to say, that she was so glad God had said vengeance was His and He would repay where it was needed and we didn't have to do a thing about it! ' Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him.' "
    She looked at him for a minute, and her face changed.
    "I never thought of it like that," she said humbly. "I never realized that God would care about what people did to me. I thought I was all alone in it. But it would help a lot to realize He does, and He'll do the getting even if there's any getting even to be done."
    A light came into Maitland's eyes, a light of satisfaction, as if