"Whatt are you doing, child? Why are you staring so?"
"I am expecting my mother; is she coming soon?" she faltered, in a low tone.
"Soon," repeated the little dark woman, with a scream of hysterical laughter, "why, she is here, child! Don't you know that I am your mother? Whatt a funny girl! My! whatt a joke!"
"You," stammered Verona, in a faint voice; the room was whirling round, as she hastily put out her hand to support herself by the table.
"Why, of course, and who else?" demanded Mrs. Chandos, in a sharp challenging key. "You are astonished because I am so small; I am astonished because you are so big, so we are quits. No?"
Verona could not speak; she felt as if a rock had fallen upon her heart and was seized by a choking sensation that threatened to strangle her. It was the crucial moment of her life. A thunderbolt had shattered her personality; her very identity seemed dissolved, who was she? What was she? Vainly she struggled to realize that she was the daughter of this half-caste woman! Yes, she, with all her delicate fastidiousness, her uncontrollable antipathy to black blood—her invincible pride of race.
Poor old Madame was indeed prophetic, when she had talked of "punishment." What a sentence! It was worse than death.
Fortunately the light was dim, the sudden Indian twilight had invaded the room, for Verona's face was fixed and frozen in an ecstasy of horror.
"You don't seem to have much to say for yourself," began Mrs. Chandos, in a querulous, complaining tone, but before she had completed the sentence her husband entered, closely followed by two young women, and a slouching youth in a gaudy red blazer.
"Ah, you and your mother have met," he observed in an unnatural muffled voice. "So you have seen her?"