Years seemed to have passed over the girl in those few days . She had drunk of pain and broken bread with sorrow . Her face was pale and strained , with bluish , transparent shadows under her large wistful eyes , out of which the dream and laughter of girlhood had gone , but into which had come the potent charm of grief and patience . Thomas Gordon had shaken his head bodingly when he had looked at her that morning at the breakfast table . `` She wo n't stand it , '' he thought . `` She is n't long for this world . Maybe it is all for the best , poor lass . But I wish that young Master had never set foot in the Connors orchard , or in this house . Margaret , Margaret , it 's hard that your child should have to be paying the reckoning of a sin that was sinned before her birth . '' Kilmeny walked through the lane slowly and absently like a woman in a dream . When she came to the gap in the fence where the lane ran into the orchard she lifted her wan , drooping face and saw Eric , sitting in the shadow of the wood at the other side of the orchard with his bowed head in his hands . She stopped quickly and the blood rushed wildly over her face . The next moment it ebbed , leaving her white as marble . Horror filled her eyes , -- blank , deadly horror , as the livid shadow of a cloud might fill two blue pools . Behind Eric Neil Gordon was standing tense , crouched , murderous . Even at that distance Kilmeny saw the look on his face , saw what he held in his hand , and realized in one agonized flash of comprehension what it meant . All this photographed itself in her brain in an instant . She knew that by the time she could run across the orchard to warn Eric by a touch it would be too late . Yet she must warn him -- she MUST -- she MUST ! A mighty surge of desire seemed to rise up within her and overwhelm her like a wave of the sea , -- a surge that swept everything before it in an irresistible flood .
As Neil Gordon swiftly and vindictively , XXXXX the face of a demon , lifted the axe he held in his hand , Kilmeny sprang forward through the gap .
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