"Good morning, my dear. Did you sleep well?"
"Not very." Betty forced her stiffened lips to frame the words. "I awoke toward morning with a terrific headache, but it is better now."
She stood boldly, with a shaft of sunlight full upon her face, conscious of the keen scrutiny to which she was being subjected, but determined to avoid possible suspicion by as realistic a semblance of candor as she could command.
The pause seemed interminable, but Mrs. Atterbury broke it at last.
"You are very pale. I must give you a headache powder before your coffee. Welch!"
A figure moved in the shadowed corner of the china closet, and Betty all but cried out in dismay. Had the sly, soft-footed butler been standing there, silently noting her hesitation on the threshold, and her significant glances about the room?
"Madame?"
"Tell Caroline to give you one of the powders from the blue box in my medicine chest; remember, the blue box."
"Yes, Madame."
Mrs. Atterbury seated herself in her accustomed place, and Betty took the chair opposite. She dared not refuse the proffered medicine but a hideous fear gripped her. Suppose her subterfuge had been suspected and she was now to be done away with, like that other whose body she had seen! Or had he really never existed, save in her distraught imagination?