Constance quite well knew that this hysterical unreason in her stepmother would pass, and that it was not more worth heeding than the wind that whistled around the ship's stripped masts. Mistress Eliza had a vixenish temper, and a jealous one. She frequently lashed herself into a fury with one or another of the family for its object and felt the better for it, not regarding how it left the victim feeling.
But though she knew this, Constance could not always act upon her knowledge, and disregard her. She was but a very young girl and now she was a very weary one, with every nerve quivering from tense anxiety in watching her father go into unknown danger.
"Oh, my father, my father! How dare you blame him, my patient, wise, forbearing father! Why did he bring you here, indeed! He--so fine, so noble, so hard-pressed with your tongue, Mistress Hopkins!--I will not hear you blame him. Oh, my father, my dear, dear, good father!" she sobbed, losing all sense of restraint in her grief.
Suddenly on hearing this outburst, Mistress Hopkins, as is sometimes the way of such as she, became as self-controlled as she had, but a moment before, been beside herself. And in becoming quiet she became much more angry than she had been, and more vindictive.
"You speak to me like this?--you dare to!" she said in a low, furious voice. "You will learn to your sorrow what it means to flout me. You will pay for this, Constantia Hopkins, and pay to the last penny, to your everlasting shame and misery."
Constance was too frightened by this change, by this white fury, which she had never seen before in her stepmother, to answer; but before she could have answered, Doctor Fuller, who had strayed that way in time to hear the last of Dame Eliza's tirade, Constance's retort, and this final threat, took Constance by the arm and led her away.
"Quiet, my dear, quiet and calm, you know! Don't let yourself forget what is due to your father's wife, to yourself, still more to your conscience," he warned her. "And remember that a soft answer turneth away wrath."
"Oh, it doesn't, Doctor Fuller, indeed it doesn't!" sobbed Constance, utterly unstrung. "I've tried it, tried it again and again, and it only makes the wrath turn the harder upon me; it never turns it away! Indeed, indeed I've faithfully tried it."
