Still she could not speak, but she did not need to, for now he understood.
He shouted at Adella,
“What have you done? Refused him again, you little minx? After all the money I have spent on you!”
When she did not deny this, Uncle Edgar raised his fists in the air and brought them down with a savage blow on his model Fort, smashing it into a thousand fragments, so that splinters of matchsticks rained down on the carpet.
“Get out!” he roared. “Get out of here, you stupid girl!”
Terrified, Adella fled from the study and ran to her bedroom.
All the way there, she could hear her uncle’s shouts and the crash of books and furniture falling to the floor as he raged against her.
She lay on her bed and waited until it was dark and the sounds of turmoil from below gradually died down.
It frig
