Again Mabel blushed. "Oh, it was written years ago."
"Then you were the author?"
"Oh, yes; why not. I wrote a great many trifles like that at one time."
"I knew it; I was sure of it."
That instant the governess came in, followed by Fair-Star, who began to plunge and caper at the sight of his mistress. Agnes looked keenly at Mrs. Harrington's flushed face; but, the covert smile, dawning on her lip, vanished, as she saw Ralph in the chair his mother had abandoned, bending over Lina; who sat upon the cushion, trifling with her guitar, from which, in her confusion, she drew forth a broken strain, now and then.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A MEETING IN THE HILLS.
"Mammy, this is too much. I can endure it no longer. You keep me working in the dark, and every step I take but adds to my own misery. I am baffled, defeated, almost exposed, and yet you say, go on."
Agnes Barker spoke in a harsh, angry tone. Her eyes blazed with passion. Her features had lost all their usual grace. She was not the same being whom we saw creeping softly into the family circle at General Harrington's with that velvety tread and sidelong glance of the eye.
The woman who stood before her, regarded this outbreak with signs of kindred impatience, and gathering a vast blanket shawl of crimson and green around her imposing figure, she stood with her arms wreathed together in the gorgeous folds, steadily regarding the impetuous young creature, till the fury of her first onset had exhausted itself.