Again that strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness’s lips.
Maggie was requested to bring up hot water and coffee, and great was her surprise to find the Baroness moving about the room when she appeared with the tray.
Half-an-hour later Berene Dumont, standing by an open window with her hands clasped behind her head, heard a light tap on her door. In answer to a mechanical “Come,” the Baroness appeared.
The rustle of her silken morning gown caused Berene to turn suddenly and face her; and as she met the eyes of her visitor the young woman’s pallor gave place to a wave of deep crimson, which dyed her face and neck like the shadow of a red flag falling on a camellia blossom.
“Maggie tells me you are ill this morning,” the Baroness remarked after a moment’s silence. “I am surprised to find you up and dressed. I came to see if I could do anything for you.”
“You are very kind,” Berene answered, while in her heart she thought how cruel was the expression in the face of the woman before her, and how faded she appeared in the morning light. “But I think I shall be quite well in a little while, I only need to keep quiet for a few hours.”
“I fear you passed a sleepless night,” the Baroness remarked with a solicitous tone, but with the same cruel smile upon her lips. “I see you never opened your bed. Something must have been in the air to keep us all awake. I did not sleep an hour, and Mr Cheney never entered his room till near morning. Yet I can understand his wakefulness—he announced his engagement to Miss Mabel Lawrence to me last evening, and a young man is not expected to woo sleep easily after taking such an important step as that. Judge Lawrence sent for him a few hours ago to come and support Miss Mabel during the trial that the day is to bring them in the death of Mrs Lawrence. The physician has predicted the poor invalid’s near end. Sorrow follows close on joy in this life.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Miss Dumont said: “I think I will try to get a little sleep now, madame. I thank you for your kind interest in me.”
The Baroness descended to her room humming an air from an old opera, and settled to the task of removing as much as possible all evidences of fatigue and sleeplessness from her countenance.
It has been said very prettily of the spruce-tree, that it keeps the secret of its greenness well; so well that we hardly know when it sheds its leaves. There are women who resemble the spruce in their perennial youth, and the vigilance with which they guard the secret of it. The Baroness was one of these. Only her mirror shared this secret.