“Oh, no, Auntie, I didn’t do that! I chanced to meet Dorcas,—one day at Janet Fayre’s,—and, somehow, we both fell in love at once!”
“Stop! don’t tell me another word! Get out, Eliza!” as Miss Gurney reappeared at the door. “I told you to get out! Now, stay out! Get away from me, Richard; you can’t help any by trying to fawn around me! You don’t know what you’ve done,—I grant you that! You don’t know—you can’t know,—how you’ve crucified me!”
Springing up from her chair, Miss Prall darted from the room, and out into the hall. Down one flight of stairs she ran, and furiously pealed the bell of Mrs Everett’s apartment on the floor below.
The maid who opened the door was startled at the visitor’s appearance, but the angry caller asked for no one; she pushed her way past the servant, and faced Mrs Everett in her own reception room.
“Do you know what’s going on, Adeline Everett? Do you know that your daughter is—is interested in my nephew? Answer me that!”
“I don’t know it, and I don’t believe it,” returned Mrs Everett, a plump, blonde matron, whose touched-up golden hair was allowed to show no gray, and whose faintly pink cheeks were solicitously cared for.
“Ask her!” quivered Letitia Prall’s angry voice, and she clenched her long thin fingers in ill-controlled rage.
“I will; she’s in the next room. Come in here, Dorcas. Tell Miss Prall she is mistaken,—presumptuously mistaken.”
The haughty stare with which the hostess regarded her guest continued until Dorcas, coming in, said, with a pretty blush and smile, “I’m afraid she isn’t mistaken, Mother.”
“Just what do you mean?” Mrs Everett asked, icily, transferring her gaze to her daughter.