"I heard Mammy Riah asking for Miss Meade. She was not in her room," began Angelica in her clear, colourless voice. "We were anxious about her—but I did not know—I did not dream——" She drew her breath sharply, and then added in a louder and firmer tone, "Miss Meade, I must ask you to leave the house in the morning."
In an instant a cold breath blowing over Caroline seemed to turn her living figure into a snow image. Her face was as white as the band of her cap, but her eyes blazed like blue flames, and her voice, when it issued from her frozen lips, was stronger and steadier than Angelica's.
"I cannot leave too soon for my comfort," she answered haughtily. "Mr. Blackburn, if you will order the car, I shall be ready in an hour——" Though she saw scarlet as she spoke, she would have swept by Angelica with the pride and the outraged dignity of an insulted empress.
"You shall not go," said Blackburn, and she saw him put out his arm, as if he would keep the two women apart.
"I would not stay," replied Caroline, looking not at him, but straight into Angelica's eyes. "I would not stay if she went on her knees to me. I will not stay even for Letty——"
"Do you know what you have done?" demanded Blackburn, in a quivering voice, of his wife. "Do you know that you are ruining your child's future—your child's chance——" Then, as if words were futile to convey his meaning, he stopped, and looked at her as a man looks at the thing that has destroyed him.
"For Letty's sake I shut my eyes as long as I could," said Angelica, and of the three, she appeared the only one who spoke in sorrow and regret, not in anger. "After to-night I can deceive myself no longer. I can deceive the servants no longer——"
Her kimono was embroidered in a lavish design of cranes and water-lilies; and while Caroline gazed at it, she felt that the vivid splashes of yellow and blue and purple were emblazoned indelibly on her memory. Years afterwards—to the very end of her life—the sight of a piece of Japanese embroidery was followed by an icy sickness of the heart, and a vision of Angelica's amber head against the background of the dimly lighted hall and the curious faces of the maid and Mammy Riah.
"You shall not——" said Blackburn, and his face was like the face of a man who has died in a moment of horror. "You shall not dare do this thing——"
He was still keeping Caroline back with his outstretched hand, and while she looked at him, she forgot her own anger in a rush of pity for the humiliation which showed in every quiver of his features, in every line of his figure. It was a torture, she knew, which would leave its mark on him for ever.