“Have you?” indifferently. “Not Madame Josephine’s bill?”
“No, no, my dear, quite the contrary, a pleasant letter from India—from Mr. Holroyd. He has written to me to say that his prospects are much improved—and that he can afford to marry now.”
Belle, who had been staring incredulously at her mother, with a rigid white face, twitching lips, and widely dilated black eyes, seized her arm in a grip of steel and said breathlessly: “To marry whom, mother, quickly—quickly?”
If Mrs. Redmond had had one lingering qualm of compunction, it was now dispelled by her daughter’s overpowering agitation.
“Why—why you, my darling, who else?”
Belle gave a faint cry, and threw herself into her embrace, and hugged her fiercely.
“Oh mother! mother, are you quite certain—certain?” she panted hysterically.
“Here is his letter, enclosed to me (she had destroyed the envelope), if you will only compose yourself, and read it, my darling.”
Belle took it eagerly, without the smallest suspicion, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, read it over rapidly; her shaking fingers scarcely able to steady the page before her eyes. “And to go in a month—in a month,” she repeated ecstatically, springing up and beginning to dance about the room, “Oh, I can scarcely believe it, I scarcely know what I am doing; it’s too good to be true.”
“Yes,” thought the old lady, as she watched her intently. Belle, for whom she had slaved and intrigued, and schemed, and slandered, and perilled her very soul, would leave her in four weeks’ time, knowing that she would never see her again, and would leave her with scarcely a pang. Anything for change, anything for excitement, anything to get away from Noone!