Anne was shivering with an almost physical sickness.
"It isn't possible," she said breathlessly. "You can't realize—with father so ill—so terribly ill. How can you think of such a thing? It's wicked—cruel! What will people think?"
"I don't really know. But they'll come. Sigrid Fersen will come, I know. I wish she would dance—just once. I have never seen her."
"That woman! You mean to have her—now?"
"I thought you'd be glad. She seems to have saved Major Tristram's life."
"The Rajah's mistress!"
Mrs. Boucicault laughed lightly.
"My dear little daughter, how grown-up of you! Is that the sort of thing your religion teaches you?"
Anne made no answer. She was ashamed and sorry, but also full of a bitter resentment, as good people are when they have been goaded into an unjustifiable aggression, an ugly, unchristian outbreak. Yet she recognized her share of the fault with contrition, and in penance sought to retrace her steps, to bridge the widening gulf between her and the woman who one short week ago had been her companion, her half-protected, half-protecting comrade. She came and laid her hand gently on her mother's.
"It was horrid of me to say that—it was uncharitable. But I am so unhappy——"