"No, never!"
"Let her come up; I cannot well give the next ten minutes to anything more miserable than myself," said Ada; "let her come up!"
Jacob left the room, and Ada, aroused to some little interest in the person who had so peremptorily demanded admission to her presence, threw off something of her languor as she saw the door swing open to admit her singular guest.
A woman entered, with a haughty, almost rude air. Her dress was clean, but of cheap material, and put on with an effort at tidiness, as if in correction of some long-acquired habits which she had found it difficult to fling off. A black hood, lined with faded crimson silk, was thrown back from her face, revealing large Roman features, fierce dark eyes, and a mouth that, in its heavy fullness, struck the beholder more unpleasantly even than the ferocious brightness of those large eyes.
The woman looked around her as she entered the dressing-room, and a faint sneer curled her lip, while she took in, with a contemptuous glance, all the elegant luxury of that little room. Ada had not for an instant dreamed of inviting a creature so unprepossessing to sit down in the room so exquisitely fitted up for her own enjoyment; but the woman waited for no indication of the kind. She cast one keen glance on the surprised and somewhat startled face turned upon her as she entered, another around the room, which contained only two chairs beside the one occupied by its mistress, and seizing one, a frail thing of carved ebony, cushioned with the most delicate embroidery on white moire, she took possession of it.
At another time Ada would have rung the bell and ordered the woman to be put from the room; but now there was a sort of fascination in this audacious coolness that aroused a reckless feeling in her own heart. She allowed the woman to seat herself, therefore, without a word; nay, a slight smile quivered about her lip as she heard the fragile ebony crack, as if about to give way beneath the heavy burden cast so roughly upon it.
The strange being sat in silence for some moments, examining Ada with a bold, searching glance, that, spite of herself, brought the blood to that haughty woman's cheek. After her fierce black eyes had roved up and down two or three times, from the pretty lace cap to the embroidered slipper, that began to beat with impatience against the cushion which it had before so languidly pressed, the woman at last condescended to speak.
"You are rich, madam; people say so, and all this looks like it. They say, too, that you are generous, good to the poor; that you give away money by handsful. I want a little of this money!"
Ada looked hard at the woman, who returned the glance almost fiercely.
"You need not search my face so sharply," she said, "I don't want the money for myself. One gets along on a little in New York, and I can always have that little without begging of rich women. I would scrub anybody's kitchen floor from morning till night, rather than ask you or any other proud aristocrat for a red cent! It isn't for myself I've come, but for a fellow prisoner, or rather one that was a fellow-prisoner, for I'm out of the cage just now. It's for an old man I want the money, a good old man that the night-hawks have taken up for murder!"