"A servant brought them; he mentioned no name, and there is no card attached."
The woman laid the wreath on the coverlet and discreetly withdrew.
Gertrude stood staring at the flowers, fascinated. In the first moment of the cold yet stifling fury which stole over her, she could have taken them in her hands and torn them petal from petal.
One instant, she had stretched out her hand towards them; the next, she had turned away, sick with the sense of impotence, of loathing, of immeasurable disdain.
What weapons could avail against the impenetrable hide of such a man?
"She never cared for him," a vindictive voice whispered to her from the depths of her heart.
Then she shrank back afraid before the hatred which held possession of her soul. The passion which had animated her on the fateful evening of Phyllis's flight, the very strength which had caused her to prevail, seemed to her fearful and hideous things. She would fain have put the thought of them away; have banished them and all recollection of Darrell from her mind for ever.
It was a bleak December morning, with a touch of east wind in the air, when Phyllis was laid in her last resting-place.
To Gertrude all the sickening details of the little pageant were as the shadows of a nightmare. Standing rigid as a statue by the open grave, she was aware of nothing but the sweet, stifling fragrance of tuberose, which seemed to have detached itself from, and prevailed over, the softer scents of rose and violet, and to float up unmixed from the flower-covered coffin.