There was a silence. Elizabeth, faint and giddy, sank into the nearest chair, and put up involuntarily her hand to her heart. So here was another danger threatening, another person who knew something—everything, perhaps? Her brain reeled. Amanda leaned back in her chair, watching her triumphantly, a hard, bright glitter in her eyes.
"Amanda!" Elizabeth's white lips tried in vain to frame a coherent question. "Amanda,"—she made another attempt—"what do you mean?"
Amanda smiled contemptuously. "Oh, you know well enough what I mean," she said. "Why did you go there this morning when you don't care for him any more, and are sorry you ever knew him, unless you're afraid of him, and have to do what he wants?"
"Oh, is that all?" Elizabeth drew a long sigh of relief. "I went there this morning because—because I wanted to meet a friend"—she broke off in confusion before the look on Amanda's face. Then, with a sudden reaction of feeling, she raised her head haughtily. "It doesn't matter," she said, "what I went there for. It's a—a studio; all his pupils go there. I might have wanted to see him about singing-lessons, about anything.—If that is all you base your suspicions on, Amanda"——She stopped.
"Ah, but if it isn't?" said Amanda, in her impressive whisper, which seemed fraught with a mysterious consciousness of power.
Another silence. The defiant look on Elizabeth's face faded; she leaned back in her chair and half closed her eyes. Ah, she was weary, deathly weary, of these constant nervous shocks. How much did Amanda know—how much? If she could only be sure!
"I think they'd be rather surprised," Amanda went on, in unnaturally quiet tones, "these swell friends of yours, if they knew all about you. They think you very sweet, they give you lots of things"—Amanda's hard, restless eyes roamed again about the room and rested on Elizabeth's beautiful gown. "It don't seem fair," she broke out, suddenly, with a fierce little sob; "it don't seem fair, that you should have so much—and then to be so pretty too, as well as all the rest!"
She was silent for a moment, struggling with the tears that threatened to break forth, and Elizabeth began to breathe more freely. All this bluster, after all, these vague threats, seemed to resolve themselves into the old, unreasoning, powerless jealousy—nothing more. And with the relief came again the sense of pity, of a certain justice in Amanda's point of view.
"It isn't fair," she said, softly. "I don't deserve it, but"——
"Well, fair or not, I guess it don't make much difference," Amanda interrupted her, drearily, rising to her feet. "You've always had the best of me, and probably, you always will. But, if ever you don't"——She broke off suddenly and moved towards the door. "I guess I'd better be going," she said. "You'll be late for your dinner. Only, before you go"—she paused with her hand on the knob of the door, that hard, mocking glitter in her eyes—"before you go, just put on some of your jewelry, won't you? Seems to me you look sort of bare without it."