She broke off almost with a shriek, for a hand was reached over her shoulder, and the note taken suddenly from her grasp, while she stood cowering beneath the discovery of her meanness. The woman whom she had supposed on the other side the hill, stood smiling quietly upon her. Not a word was spoken. The woman took out her taper box, dropped some fresh wax beneath the seal, and smiling all the time, handed the note back again.
Agnes turned her face, now swarthy with shame, aside from that smiling look, and began to plunge her little foot down angrily into the moss, biting her lips till the blood came. At last, she lifted her head with a toss, and turning her black eyes boldly on the woman, said, in a voice of half-tormenting defiance, "Very well, what if I did open it? My first lesson was, when you and I read Mrs. Harrington's letter. If that was right, this is, also."
"Who complained? Who, in fact, cares?" was the terse answer, "only it was badly done. The next time you break a seal, be sure and have wax of exactly the same tint on hand. I thought of that, and came back. It would ruin all, if General Harrington saw his letters tampered with."
"You are a strange woman!" said Agnes, shaking off the weight of shame that oppressed her, and preparing to go.
"And you, a strange girl. Now go home, and leave the note as I directed. In a day or two we shall meet again. Almost any time, at nightfall you will find me here. Good night!"
"Good night," said Agnes, sullenly, "I will obey you this once, but remember my reward."
Again the two parted, and each went on her separate path of evil—the one lost in shadows, the other bathed in the light of a warm sunset.
It did not strike the woman, as she toiled upward to her solitary dwelling, that she was training a viper which would in the end turn and sting her own bosom. Her evil purposes required instruments, and without hesitation, she had gathered them out of her own life. But, even now, she found them difficult to wield, and hard to control. What they might prove in the future remained for proof.