The Baroness was about to retort that it was a lie and she didn’t believe it, when a sudden trembling overtook her, which she was powerless to resist. Her whole face shook as if every muscle had lost control, and her cumbersome frame followed suit. She did not cry, nor call out, but stood where the news had reached her, immovable, except for that awful shaking, which made her sway from head to foot. The Baron on hearing the intelligence turned round to go downstairs and dispatch William, who was employed in the stables, in search of a medical man. Miss Wynward took the lifeless body in her arms and tenderly turned it over, kissing the pallid face as she did so—when Harriet Brandt, full of mournful curiosity, advanced to have a look at her dead playmate. Her appearance, till then unnoticed, seemed to wake the paralysed energies of the Baroness into life. She pushed the girl from the bed with a violence that sent her reeling against the mantelshelf, whilst she exclaimed furiously,
“Out of my sight! Don’t you dare to touch ’im! This is all your doing, you poisonous, wicked creature!”
Harriet stared at her hostess in amazement! Had she suddenly gone mad with grief?
“What do you mean, Madame?” she cried.
“What I say! I ought to ’ave known better than to let you enter an ’ouse of mine! I was a fool not to ’ave left you be’ind me at Heyst, to practise your devilish arts on your army captains and foreign grocers, instead of letting you come within touch of my innocent child!”
“You are mad!” cried Harriet. “What have I done? Do you mean to insinuate that Bobby’s death has anything to do with me?”
“It is you ’oo ’ave killed ’im,” screamed the Baroness, shaking her stick, “it’s your poisonous breath that ’as sapped ’is! I should ’ave seen it from the beginning. Do you suppose I don’t know your ’istory? Do you think I ’aven’t ’eard all about your parents and their vile doings—that I don’t know that you’re a common bastard, and that your mother was a devilish negress, and your father a murderer? Why didn’t I listen to my friends and forbid you the ’ouse?”
“Miss Wynward!” said Harriet, who had turned deadly white at this unexpected attack, “what can I say? What can I do?”
“Leave the room, my dear, leave the room! Her ladyship is not herself! She does not know what she is saying!”
“Don’t I?” screamed Madame Gobelli, barring the way to the door, “I am telling ’er nothing but the truth, and she doesn’t go till she ’as ’eard it! She has the vampire’s blood in ’er and she poisons everybody with whom she comes in contact. Wasn’t Mrs. Pullen and Mademoiselle Brimont both taken ill from being too intimate with ’er, and didn’t the baby die because she carried it about and breathed upon it? And now she ’as killed my Bobby in the same way—curse ’er!”