The strong green tea was brought up. Sister Eliza sipped hers in silence, gazing sadly at her broken-hearted Chief.
Soon Catherine got up from her chair, and going to a cupboard, drew out a small bottle. She laughed a little hysterical laugh—one of those laughs that have more pain in them than any sob—and said:
"I am taking a leaf out of our friend Susan Riley's book. She found laudanum useful. A little mixed with one's tea is good; at any rate it prevents rage from driving one quite mad," and she poured some of the contents of the bottle into her cup.
"It is a dangerous practice though," observed her friend.
"Dangerous! how so? What have I to fear? The habit of laudanum-tippling soon spoils a young woman's beauty. Look at Susan, it has made her vanity suffer somewhat, I know; but it can't hurt me in that way, or in any other way, for the matter of that," and she laughed that terrible laugh again.
Sister Eliza felt a sincere sorrow for this one human being she admired; she saw that Catherine ought not to be left alone in her present wild state of mind. "I should like to come and see you often, Sister Catherine," she ventured to say.
"It is very kind of you, Eliza, but it cannot be a good thing for you, as I don't feel like being a very pleasant companion just now. I leave town to-morrow, perhaps for years, and I cannot tell you where I am going."
Sister Eliza found that her presence, far from soothing, only irritated the more the miserable woman. Catherine would not be comforted. She was in that mood when the mind rejects all consolation, and loves to torture itself—when one purposely hurts the feelings of one's best friends to make one's own heart bleed the more; so Sister Eliza, seeing that no good would be effected by staying longer, bade her good-bye and left her.
The Sisterhood was no more. Susan Riley, like a rat, had early deserted the falling house: unlike the Chief, she had profited not a little in various ways from the Society, and had been in receipt of a salary as one of the officers; but gratitude was not one of this young lady's characteristics. Having saved some money, she now took a small tobacconist's shop in the neighbourhood of the Strand. She thought it would be the very business to suit her, genteel, idle, and affording excellent opportunities for flirtations and intrigues with such of her customers as were possessed of more money than brains.