"What, then, am I to do?" Laodice cried with increasing alarm.
Amaryllis shrugged her shoulders.
"I can advise with John," she said. "Doubtless he will allow you to remain here until you can provide yourself with other shelter."
Laodice heard this cold sentence with a chill of fear that was new to her. Faint pictures of hunger and violence, terrifying in the extreme, confronted her. Yet not any of them frightened her more than the offered favor of the Gischalan. Her indignation at the woman who had supplanted her swept over her with a reflexive flush of heat.
"God of my fathers, judge her in her lies, and pour the fire of Thy wrath upon her!" she exclaimed vehemently.
Amaryllis gazed curiously at the girl. In her soul, she asked herself if there might not be unsounded depths of fierceness in this nature which she ought not to stir up.
"Thou hast hope," she said tactfully. "She hath no such beauty as thine!"
"Nothing but my proofs!" Laodice broke in.
"And Philadelphus is a young man."
"Rejecting her only because I am fairer than she! He is no just man!" Laodice cried hotly.