"Go to the devil then," and the sympathetic Van Dam wrapped himself up and went to sleep.
Gus worked fussily at his clothes till a late hour, devoutly hoping he should meet no one whom he knew before reaching his dressing-room in New York.
CHAPTER XVI
BLACK HANNIBAL'S WHITE HEART
Edith half led, half carried her sobbing sister to the parlor. Mrs. Allen, no longer languid, and Laura from her exile, were already there, and with dismayed faces drew near the sofa where Zell had been placed.
"What has happened?" asked Mrs. Allen tremblingly.
Edith's self-control, now that her enemies were gone, gave way utterly, and sinking on the floor, she swayed back and forth, sobbing even more hysterically than Zell, and her mother and Laura, oppressed with the sense of some new impending disaster, caught the contagion of their bitter grief, and wept and wrung their hands also.
The frightened maid stood in one door, with white questioning face, and old gray-haired Hannibal in another, with streaming eyes of honest sympathy.
"Speak, speak, what is the matter?" almost shrieked Mrs. Allen.
Edith could not speak, but Zell sobbed, "I—don't—know. Edith—seems to have—gone—mad."