Floyd rode into Highboro to fetch Dr. Chester Porterfield, whose wife Mamie was not bound by the same professional discretion as the doctor. Bonard rode over to Beulah Land an hour after they had settled Selma in her room. He was unshaved, and his clothes showed the haste with which he had dressed after waking to discover that his bride had left him. He was near hysteria, his mind in a torment of shame and offended pride. He had, from overdrinking and the heightened emotion of the occasion, behaved cruelly. That he knew, but he also asserted to Deborah and Felix, who received him on his arrival, that he had been sorely provoked.

Deborah was cold and reserved and said that he must return to Oaks alone for the time being, but that when Selma was recovered, she would certainly see the reasonableness of returning to live with him. In the meantime, they must all be as cautious and silent as possible and hope that neighbors would soon forget what had happened, their further curiosity being unsatisfied. When Bonard sat still and frowning, he was persuaded to return to Oaks by Felix, who, alone of those who knew some details of what had occurred, felt any sympathy for the young man. He had, after all, but to remember his own wedding night. Although the years had built a convenient fiction between them, neither he nor Nell would, of course, ever forget what had happened to them.

Nell had, indeed, taken to her bed—or rather, kept to it when she heard the news from Felix. Before she was equal to the effort of rising that morning, he entered her room and told her in a careful way enough of what had happened for her to imagine the rest of it.

As for Pauline, her anger increased as she absorbed the event. After Bonard arrived at the house, Lovey, who knew more of her daughter’s passionate nature than anyone else even if she did not understand it, intercepted Pauline in the breezeway and disarmed her of a butchering knife she carried concealed in the folds of her long skirt. As Lovey wrenched the knife from her daughter’s hand and hid it in the folds of her own skirt, she said, “You want it worse? You want to kill me? You want to make them have to kill you?”

Pauline fled from the breezeway to the family cabin where she remained alone until she had grown calm enough to return to the main house and go about her usual work.