It was of this very exploit, never dreaming of the fateful
consequences, she and Kate Sanders were so blissfully bubbling over,
fairly shaking with maiden merriment when the despoiled victim,
homeward bound, caught sight of them upon the _mesa_. Ten minutes
more, and in full force she had been made to feel the blow of her
father's fierce displeasure. Twenty minutes more, and, under the blow
of her father's furious wrath, Blakely had been felled like a log.
When with elongated face and exaggerated gloom of manner Aunt Janet
came to make her realize the awful consequences of her crime, Angela's
first impulse had been to cry out against her father's unreasoning
rage. When she learned that he was in close arrest,--to be tried,
doubtless, for his mad assault,--in utter revulsion of feeling, in
love and tenderness, in grief and contrition inexpressible, she had
thrown herself at his feet and, clasping his knees, had sobbed her
heart out in imploring his forgiveness for what she called her wicked,
heedless, heartless conduct. No one saw that blessed meeting, that
scene of mutual forgiveness, of sweet reconciliation; too sweet and
serene, indeed, for Janet's stern and Calvinistic mold.
Are we ever quite content, I wonder, that others' bairnies should be
so speedily, so entirely, forgiven? All because of this had all
Janet's manifestations of sympathy for Robert to be tempered with a
fine reserve.
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