She stopped on her way home to tell Sillon and Devery that "it was all right." She let them know, modestly, that there was a certain person now in France in whom she was profoundly interested, and that she had feared some bad news in regard to him. Then she went to a quiet little restaurant and ate a delicious little dinner all alone, and in the chilly, cloudy evening walked home—a long walk.
She was enjoying a feeling of exquisite and complete triumph. She had won! She was safe now, her troubles over. Certainly God had helped her. She was young, beautiful, beloved; she was about to be rich. She had made a gallant fight against great odds, and she had conquered.
She greeted her mother with unusual affection and was willing to talk with her for quite a time, about her business, about the shortcomings of the tenants, about everything in the world except what had happened. That she didn’t mention.
She began slowly to undress while her mother was still in the kitchen, ironing a collar for her to wear the next day. She looked at herself in the mirror, in her dainty camisole—a beautiful woman, with her delicate bare arms, her slender shoulders, her curious, glowing black eyes in her pale and lovely face——
And suddenly, almost as if she saw it in the glass beside her own, another face, fierce, hawk-like, rigid and white, with bright hair spread out and floating as if in the sea. Her dead lover!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I
The parlour now rejoiced in a new and pretty little "set," put in there only the week before in order to receive the visits of Eddie. On one of the chairs sat Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in silk, her hair skilfully fluffed by her daughter, her hands manicured, her feet in soft new boots. She was well aware that she had never looked so common, so perfectly the janitress and scrubwoman. Her strained, haggard face, her faded eyes, her blunted and withered hands belied her fine attire. They could have belonged only to a woman who had worked brutally and hopelessly. She was years younger than Mrs. Russell, but she might have passed for her mother.
Her patient hands were folded in her silken lap; she had nothing to do, and very little to think about. The blasphemous triumph was accomplished; she was about to see Sin crowned and rewarded, Innocence betrayed and abandoned—in other words, Angelica married to Eddie. She was disgusted with life, thoroughly disappointed with her God. She took no pleasure in these preparations, or in any of the comforts and enjoyments before her. Nothing sustained her but a vague sort of hope that her just God would retrieve Himself by stopping this wedding in some way—with thunderbolts, or the flaming swords of archangels. And she was well aware that one couldn’t really count upon anything of that sort.
Out in the kitchen she could hear the servant—she, the charwoman, servant of servants, sitting in the parlour while another woman drudged for her! In half an hour an automobile was coming to take them to the church, and then they were going off to Buena Vista, going to leave all this poverty and humiliation behind forever. She had been given to understand that she wasn’t to live with her child, only to visit until a suitable home could be found for her. She was to have an apartment and a servant all of her own; she was to furnish the place as she wished, and she was to be provided with a new wardrobe.