“Isn’t she radiant?” demanded Eva. “She’s the most beautifulest creature I ever saw!”
“She looks much as her mother must have looked at the same age,” commented the colonel. “There is a marked family resemblance.”
“She is beautiful,” agreed Mrs. Pennington; “but I venture to say that she is looking her worst right now. She doesn’t appear at all well, to me. Her complexion is very sallow, and sometimes there is the strangest expression in her eyes—almost wild. The nervous shock of her mother’s death must have been very severe; but she bears up wonderfully, at that, and she is so sweet and appreciative!”
“I sized her up over there in the kitchen to-day,” said Custer. “She’s the real article. I can always tell by the way people treat a servant whether they are real people or only counterfeit. She was as sweet and natural to Hannah as she is to mother.”
“I noticed that,” said his mother. “It is one of the hall marks of good breeding; but we could scarcely expect anything else of Mrs. Burke’s daughter. I know she must be a fine character.”
In the room above them Shannon Burke, with trembling hands and staring eyes, was inserting a slender needle beneath the skin above her hip. In the movies one does not disfigure one’s arms or legs.
CHAPTER XIV
The day of the funeral had come and gone. It had been a very hard one for Shannon. She had determined that on this day, at least, she would not touch the little hypodermic syringe. She owed that much respect to the memory of her mother. And she had fought—God, how she had fought!—with screaming nerves that would not be quiet, with trembling muscles, and with a brain that held but a single thought—morphine, morphine, morphine!
She tried to shut the idea from her mind. She tried to concentrate her thoughts upon the real anguish of her heart. She tried to keep before her a vision of her mother; but her hideous, resistless vice crowded all else from her brain, and the result was that on the way back from the cemetery she collapsed into screaming, incoherent hysteria.