“I shall go if I wish. Yes, if I wish!” she repeated.
“Joanna!” cried Luiza, going to the door.
She wanted to call the cook, a policeman, any one, to her assistance; but Juliana, shaking her fist insolently at her, followed her.
“The senhora had better not provoke me,” she said; “she had better not make me angry.” And she added through her clenched teeth, “Waste-papers are not always thrown into the drain.”
“What do you mean?” cried Luiza, drawing back in terror.
“I mean that I have the letters the senhora wrote to her lover safe here in my pocket,” she cried, striking her pocket with violence.
Luiza looked wildly at her for a moment, then sank down on the floor, beside the sofa, insensible.
CHAPTER XIII.
MISTRESS AND MAID.
ON coming to herself again, Luiza’s first impression was that of two unknown faces bending over her. A moment afterwards one of them disappeared, and then the sharp sound of a glass bottle set down on the marble top of her dressing-table aroused her to fuller consciousness. She heard a voice saying softly,—
“She is better. Did it take her suddenly, Senhora Juliana?”