“De Malpas?” The name was almost hissed from the lips of Licorice.
“The same. It was to be, Licorice. Adonai knows why! But it is evident they were fated to meet.”
“What did the viper tell her?”
“I do not gather that he told her any thing, except that she brought a face to his memory that he had known of old. She fancies—and so of course does he—that it was her sister.”
A low, peculiar laugh from her mother made Belasez’s blood curdle as she lay listening. There seemed so much more of the fiend in it than the angel.
“What an ass he must be, never to guess the truth!”
“She wants to know the truth, wife. She asked me if she might not.”
“Thou let it alone. I’ll cook up a nice little story, that will set her mind at rest.”
“O Licorice!—more deception yet?”
“Deception! Why, wouldst thou tell her the truth? Just go to her now, and wake her, and let her know that she is—”