That he strove, and strove hard, to control his manner,
if not his anger, was perfectly evident to his wife, but that he was
succeeding ill at the task was painfully apparent. His colour was
high--it nearly matched his hair; his eyes burned like consuming fires
under their dark brows; his lips spoke fast and fiercely. He kept his
voice down--Ellen was thankful for that--and his gestures, though
forceful, were controlled; but she feared at every moment that he would
break out into open show of temper, and it seemed to her that this she
could not bear.
She had never before seen Red Pepper really angry. She had been told,
again and again since her first meeting with him, by her sister and her
sister's husband, and by the Chesters, that Burns was capable of getting
into a red rage in which nobody could influence or calm him, and in which
he could or would not control himself. They invariably added that these
hot exhibitions of high temper were frequently over as suddenly as they
had appeared, and usually did nobody any harm whatever. But they hinted
that there had been times in the past when Red had said or done that
which could not be forgiven by his victims, and that he had more than
once alienated people of standing whose good-will he could not afford to
lose.
"He keeps a woodpile back of the house," James Macauley had told her
once, laughingly, in the last days before she had married Burns, "where
he works off a good deal of high pressure.
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