Isabel heard her come in two hours later, and it was another hour before she slept. She had determined to ask her wayward but still awesome relative to leave San Francisco before her son found her out or she had time more fully to disgrace him. But how to approach the most unapproachable woman she had ever known with so delicate a proposition was a question that made her toss about her ancestral bed and kept the blood in her brain. She recalled the slip of paper announcing a prize-fight, and wondered at her stupidity; for she had heard something of the resources of blasée women ere this.
Finally she fell asleep. She was awakened by a sharp earthquake—grim herald of the coming year! She was too well seasoned to have felt anything more than a passing annoyance, had she not heard Lady Victoria give a piercing scream and run from her room. Whereupon she rejoiced wickedly, flung a wrapper across her shoulders, and went into the hall. Gwynne was standing in his doorway, looking more asleep than awake, and intensely disapproving. Lady Victoria was leaning against the wall, her eyes wide with terror. Isabel took her firmly by the arm, marched her into her room, helped her into a dressing-gown, and, pushing her into a chair, took one opposite.
"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Victoria. "I had forgotten about earthquakes—"
"Earthquake!" said Isabel, contemptuously. "That was a mere vibration. We had sixty-two of those last winter. If you only stay long enough we will show you what California really can do. Every ten years or so we have a good hard shake—enough to bring the plaster down; and every half-century or so she gets up and turns over. I have made a specialty of earthquakes, and could tell you extraordinary tales of some of the great ones of the south—"
"Please do not. I prefer to forget. But don't leave me. Fancy Angélique sleeping through such a thing!"
"Doubtless she is not in the house. All the world was out last night."
"Was it?"
"I think this as good a time as any other to tell you, Cousin Victoria, that I saw you last night—just as the clocks were striking twelve."
"Did you?"
Her trained features did not betray her, but Isabel saw the figure under the loose gown grow rigid and brace itself against the back of the chair. And as Isabel stared at her, with the desperate courage born of the sudden plunge, it seemed to her that she felt a vibration from the nausea, the disgust, the hatred of life, the death-rattle of great passions dying hard. She wondered again, if, given the same conditions, she would have differed much from the woman she had brought to bay. Her early trials and provincial upbringing had developed her Puritan inheritance, but she had had flashing and startling glimpses of her depths now and again. For a moment she felt the waters of an immemorial ennui rise high in her own soul, then drop to the grinning skulls and sparkless ashes of old pleasures. She shuddered back, and raised her eyes once more to the haughty mask opposite.