But here was this letter, in which Lot Gordon called her--her, Madelon Hautville--his sweetheart, and begged her to come to him, as he had something of importance to say to her! He used, moreover, terms of endearment which thrilled her with the stinging shame of lashes upon her bare shoulders at the public whipping-post.
She lit the candle on her table, snatched the letter out of her pocket, crumpled it fiercely as if it were some live thing that she would crush the life out of, and then held it to the candle-flame until it burned away, and the last flashes of it scorched her fingers.

Then she caught a sight of her own miserable, shamed face in her looking-glass, and flushed redder and struck herself in her face angrily, and then fell to walking up and down her little room.
Her father and brothers down below heard her, and looked at each other.
"There was that Emmeline Littlefield that went mad, and fell to walking all the time," said Abner.
The others listened to the footsteps overhead with a gloomy assent of silence.
"They had to keep her in a room with an iron grate on the window," said Abner, further, with a pale scowl.
Then David Hautville took down his leather jacket from its peg with a jerk, and thrust his arm into it.

"I tell ye, she's a _woman_," he said, in a shout, as if to drown out those hurrying steps; and then he went out of the room and the house, and disappeared with axe on shoulder across the snowy reach of fields; and presently all his sons except Eugene followed him.

Eugene remained to keep watch over his sister..