Now that fear was gone she had time to be puzzled. Up to a week ago a visit from her cousin at the hour of "combing and confidences" had been a regular affair, but one of the changes noticeable in her attitude had been the abandonment of the nightly habit. It was a great opportunity for the clear understanding on which she meant to insist, but it was very late, she was tired, and, as often happens, felt a sudden disinclination to put her resolution to the test. She decided to simulate sleep. She breathed a little heavier and closed her eyes.
Leslie set down her lamp—she heard it distinctly on the little marble-topped table beside the bed—and bent over her. She felt her cousin's breath on her cheek. The thin, weak hand began to stroke her forehead and hair. Nelly was proof against a good many things, but not against tickling. She laughed and opened her eyes.
Next moment, with a leap as lithe as a panther's, she had jumped out of bed and, gripping her cousin's wrists, bore her backward on to the floor. She was strong as well as active, and upon the thick carpet the struggle was as brief as it was noiseless. Something fell from the older woman's hand. She tossed it back on the bed and, switching on the electric current, flooded the room with light. Leslie picked herself up, crawled to the wall and crouched there, her knees drawn up to her chin, looking at her cousin through her tawny mane, with eyes wide and distraught in her white, quivering face.
Fenella gave one look at the little stiletto on the bed, and covered her face with her hands in a reaction of terror.
"Oh, Leslie! Wicked—wicked woman! What had I done to you? Oh, what a horror! And under your own roof! Oh, you must be mad!"
"Go on!" said Leslie, thickly. "Ring the bell—wake the house! Have me put in a mad-house. Father wouldn't care, nor any one else. He's cursed me and called me a wet blanket heaps of times before people. I'm in every one's way now mother's gone."
Fenella still looked at her incredulously. She was expecting every moment to wake from her nightmare. A thing like this couldn't be real—couldn't be life! Suddenly the wretched woman flung herself at her feet, weeping and kissing them.
"Oh! my darling, don't look at me like that, as though I were some poisonous reptile. Oh, my God! what have I done? Do you think I really meant to harm you? Do you think I'm jealous? But if I am, it's only for your own good name. It's their fault. Of course you're nothing to them; they didn't know you when you were a little baby girl. I only wanted to be sure. And then something said to me that if—that if—Why do you shrink that way? Do you loathe to have me touch you?"
Fenella bent forward and laid her hand across the hysterical woman's mouth.
"Leslie, be quiet this instant, or I won't answer for what I'll do. And throw this over you or you'll get a chill. Now, are you quieter? I'm not going to make a fuss, or even tell a living soul what's happened to-night. But it's on a condition."