"You take my baby?" she asked. Perhaps it was the gentleness of her tone that made John Ozanne stop to explain that it was not fitting for an Englishman's child to be dragged up in a kitchen, and that the thing could not go on any longer.
"I quite understand that you've been very good, my woman, and I shall see that you are well re——"
"You take her; she be dead in twenty-four hours," said Rachel Bangat impassively. Her deep languorous voice seemed to stroke its hearers like a velvety hand, yet had in it some deadly quality. To John Ozanne, unimaginative man though he was, it was like hearing the click of a revolver in the hand of an enemy who is a dead shot. His grasp slackened round the child, and his wife took her from him and set her back in the box. They went out alone. Never again was an attempt made to break the two years' compact.
At the end of the allotted time, Mrs. Ozanne returned the farthing to the Malay, who received it in silence but with a strange and secret smile. Little Rosanne, healthy and strong, was taken into the bosom of her family, and John Ozanne, with scant ceremony or sentiment, paid Rachel Bangat handsomely for her services and dismissed her. Presumable the Malay Location swallowed her up, for she was seen no more at the hotel, and the whole strange episode was, to all outward appearance, finished.
These happenings having been overpast for some fifteen years, many changes had come, in the meantime, to the Ozanne family. The head of it—that good citizen, husband, and father, John Ozanne—after amassing a large fortune, had severed his connection with the hotel and retired to enjoy the fruits of his industry. Fate, however, had not permitted him to enjoy them long, for he was badly injured in a carriage accident and died shortly afterward, leaving everything to his wife and daughters. The latter, having enjoyed the advantages of education in England and France, were now returned to their mother's wing, and the three lived together in a large, cool stone residence which, pleasantly situated in Belgravia (even then the most fashionable part of Kimberley), was known as Tiptree House.
Both girls were extremely pretty, with all the bloom and grace of their eighteen years upon them, and moved in the best society the place afforded—a society which, if not more cultured, was at least more alive and interesting than that of the average English country town. For Kimberley continued to be the place where the most wonderful diamonds were to be picked out of the earth, as commonly as shells off the beach of a South Sea Island, and the adventurous and ambitious still circulated there in great numbers. There was no lack of gaiety and excitement, and the Ozanne girls joined in all that went on, and were extremely popular, though in different ways and for different reasons. Rosalie, blond, with a nature as sunny as her hair, and all her heart to be read in her frank, blue eyes, was beloved by her friends for her sympathy and sweetness; while the feelings that Rosanne excited were more in the nature of admiration and astonishment at her wit and fascination, and the verve with which she threw herself into life. She was always in demand for brilliant functions, which she made the more brilliant by her presence; but, though she had the art of attracting both men and women, she also possessed a genius for searing and wounding those who came too close, and she was not able to keep her friends as Rosalie did. Her dark beauty was touched with something wild and mysterious that repelled even while it charmed, and her ways were as subtle and strange as her looks. Indeed, though she lived under the same roof with her mother and sister, and to all outward appearance seemed to be one with them in their daily life and interests, she was really an exile in her own family, and all three were aware of the fact. Rosalie and Mrs. Ozanne, being single-hearted, simple people, were in complete accord with one another; but there was no real intimacy between them and Rosanne, and though they had (for love of the latter) tried for years to break down the intangible barrier that existed, all efforts were vain and usually resulted in pain to themselves. It was as though Rosanne dwelt within the fortified camp of herself, and only came glancing forth like a black arrow when she saw an opportunity to deal a wound.
Mrs. Ozanne, in brooding over the matter—as she often did—silently and sadly, assigned this secret antagonism in Rosanne to the strange episode of the girl's babyhood, and bitterly blamed the Malay woman for stealing her child's heart and changing her nature. Sometimes she actually went so far as to wonder if it would not have been better to have let Rosanne die than have made the uncanny bargain that had restored her to health. Once she had even pondered over the possibility of the Malay having tricked her by exchanging the real Rosanne for another child, but it was impossible to entertain such an idea long; Rosanne bore too strong a resemblance to her father's side of the family, and there were, besides, certain small birthmarks which no art could have imitated.
Still, indubitably a something existed in Rosanne that was foreign to her family. And the cruel streak in her character which betrayed itself in cutting comments, as bright as they were incisive, and tiny acts of witty malice were incomprehensible to her kindly-natured mother and sister. Furthermore, her hatred, when it was aroused, seemed to possess the mysterious quality of a curse. For instance, it appeared to be enough for her to give one dark glance at someone she intensely disliked or who had crossed her wishes, for that person to fall sick, or suffer accident or loss or some unexpected ill. Mrs. Ozanne had noticed it times out of number; in fact, she secretly kept a sort of black list of all the things that had happened to people who had been so unfortunate as to offend Rosanne. At first, it had seemed to the mother impossible that there could be anything in the thing, but the evidence had gradually mounted up until now it was almost overwhelming. Besides, Mrs. Ozanne was not alone in remarking it. Rosalie, too, knew, and conveyed her knowledge in round-about ways to her mother, for they would never speak openly of this strangeness in one they dearly loved. But it was through Rosalie that the mother heard that the same thing had gone on at school. There, the other girls had superstitiously but secretly named Rosanne "The Hoodoo Girl," because to have much to do with her always brought you bad luck, especially if you fell out with her. In fact, whenever you crossed her in any way, "something happened," the girls said.
"Something happen!" Those had been the Malay cook's words that had haunted and intimidated Mrs. Ozanne. And that was what it all amounted to. Rosanne had, in some way, acquired the power of her foster-mother for making things of an unpleasant nature happen to people she did not like. Kind-hearted Mrs. Ozanne, with mind always divided between stern conviction and a wish to deride it, suffered a mental trepidation that grew daily more unbearable, for what had been serious enough when Rosanne was younger began to be something perilously sinister now that she was turning into a woman and her deeper passions and emotions began to be aroused. In fact, the thing had come home to Mrs. Ozanne with renewed significance lately, and she was still trembling with apprehension over several strange happenings.
This was one of them: Pretty Mrs. Valpy, an intimate of the family, and by way of being one of the only two close friends Rosanne could boast, had fallen out with the latter at a ball where she was chaperoning the two girls. From a little misunderstanding about a dance, a serious quarrel had arisen. Rosanne, considering herself engaged for the seventh waltz to Major Satchwell, had kept it for him only to find that Mrs. Valpy, having in error written his name down for the same dance instead of the next, had kept him to it, with the result that Rosanne was obliged to "sit it out," a proceeding not at all agreeable to her as the best dancer in Kimberley. She had been in a fury, and, when the two came to her at the end of the dance, she did not disguise her annoyance. Major Satchwell apologized and explained the error away as best he could, knowing himself in the wrong for having been prevailed upon by Mrs. Valpy; but the latter aggravated the offence by laughing merrily over it and saying, with a touch of malice: