"My—my jewelry?" Elizabeth's heart, which had been beating more quietly, suddenly stood still. "I—I don't wear jewelry, Amanda," she said, in a dull, toneless voice.
"What, not your pearls?" Amanda's hard, mocking eyes seemed to read her through and through. "Your pearls you were so proud of in the country, that you said you'd always wear. Seems to me you need them—with that fine dress!"
She stood hovering by the door, a weird figure in the exaggerated smartness of her attire, with her white face framed in the deep red hair, and that strange, uncanny smile gleaming across it, lighting it up into an elf-like suggestion of mysterious power. Elizabeth stared at her helplessly, fascinated; then, with a great effort, she roused herself and hurried towards her.
"Amanda!" she cried, desperately. "Amanda, for Heaven's sake, stop these insinuations! Tell me plainly what you mean?" She gripped her fiercely by the arm, her face was white and set. For a moment Amanda's eyes met hers. Then, as if in spite of herself, they fell, she freed herself sullenly from Elizabeth's grasp.
"Well, I guess I didn't mean much," she said, awkwardly, "or if I did, it don't matter. I wouldn't tell tales against—my first cousin"—She turned the knob of the door, but again she paused, that weird smile still flickering in her eyes. "Good-night," she said, "I hope you'll enjoy your dinner. Too bad you haven't got your pearls." She gave one last jarring laugh, opened the door and went out.
Elizabeth, white and trembling, sank into the nearest chair.
"How she frightened me!" she gasped out. "These constant shocks will kill me. Does she know anything definite? Probably not. But what can I do, how can I find out?—Ah, Celeste!"—as the maid appeared with an anxious expression in the door-way. "The carriage is waiting? Very well." She hurried to the dressing-table, caught up her gloves and gave one hasty glance at her white face. "How ugly I am growing," she thought, turning away with a shudder; "quite like Amanda! I see the resemblance. It is this awful life. I wish—oh, how I wish I were home!" The thought swept over her, thrilling her with an intense, passionate longing for her aunts' presence, for the country quiet, for rest and peace.
"Yes, I will go home," she thought, as Celeste adjusted the cloak about her shoulders and she hastened down to the carriage. "I will go home," she repeated to herself at intervals during the evening, while she talked and laughed with a restless light in her eyes and a feverish flush on her cheeks. "The country will be so peaceful. I shall be quite safe there, away from all this agitation, this trying to keep up appearances. It is the best way out. How fortunate that he is away! I won't see him again before I go."
It was, she felt, an heroic resolution. Yes, she would go at once. And she resolutely crushed back the thought: "He will follow."