“No—no!” she cried violently. “Don’t think of such a thing—don’t suggest it! I don’t want to see that gentleman again, ever. This is my affair, Mrs. Cassidy; leave it to me.”
She rose from the table and walked to the window.
“There’s no use gettin’ mad about it,” retorted the other, somewhat tartly, rising from the rocker and setting the tea-things on the tray. “I’m only tryin’ to do the best I can for you. And it don’t seem to me just right for a girl like you, young and not over-strong, to be knockin’ round this way, when she’s got friends ready to black her boots for her. Still, it’s your funeral, not mine.”
There was no reply, and as she lifted the tray she said in an aggrieved tone:
“I don’t want to hurt no one’s feelin’s, but I want to do my dooty in this world. Well, good night, deary. Don’t get down on your luck. You’re not so friendless as you think.”
After she had left the room, Viola stood motionless, looking out of the window on the gray and soot-grimed back yard. Night was falling, and the washing, still pendulating on its lines after the slovenly fashion of the neighborhood, gleamed white and ghostly through the dusk. A high brick wall shut off the end of the lot, and over this, dark, mournful-looking trails of ivy hung downward, rubbing back and forth in the passing breaths of wind. It was a prospect and an hour conducive to melancholy. But Viola felt none. For the moment a sense of hunted terror had shut out all other feelings.
He had searched for her, employed detectives to try and find a clue to her hiding-place! And now, led by some horrible caprice of destiny, she had walked into the very house where he would soonest find her. She must go to-morrow. Mrs. Cassidy could not be trusted. The expression of her face, with its ugly, half-concealed triumph and its coarsely prying interest, warned the girl that the secret of her whereabouts would not long remain with the widow. In a fever of anxiety she paced up and down the room. Her nerves, broken by the shock and strain of the past two weeks, exaggerated the importance of the situation, till she felt as if Mrs. Cassidy and Gault had spread a net around her, from which, in her weakness, she would never be able to break away.
She fell asleep, only to wake in the dead of the night, shaken into throbbing consciousness by the thought that the widow had already communicated with Gault, and that the conversation of that evening was for the purpose of preparing her for the appearance of her lover. Curled up and trembling under the clothes, she lay staring into the blackness about her. It seemed a reflex, in its impenetrable gloom, of her own surroundings. With the goblin terrors of night weighing upon her overwrought spirit, she felt too helpless and feeble to battle with a life that was so beset with pitfalls. The dreariness of her isolation, the hopelessness of her misplaced love, that should have been the crown of her life, and was instead its direst dread and peril, seemed combining to crush her, and in her despair she pressed her face into the pillow and whispered wild supplications for death.
The next morning life did not look so formidable. Things fell into their proper perspective, and Viola’s fears of Mrs. Cassidy as an agent of destruction appeared phantasmagoric. Nevertheless, sunlight and its restoring influences did not allay all her doubts of the woman. She had seen her thoughts and intentions written on her face, and she knew that it would only be a question of time when she would be tempted to communicate with Gault.
She determined to leave Mrs. Cassidy with no clue as to her new place of residence. She had no idea as to where she would go, except that she would try to find a lodging as far from where she was now as possible. This would be an easy matter. The town seemed to be placarded from end to end with the signs of “Furnished Rooms.” Viola was brave, now the morning had come, and with it sunlight. Moreover, the thought of moving from the locality every corner of which seemed alive with memories of her father was a sustaining relief.