Fran's eyes resembled cold stones with jagged points as her steady arm pointed: "Go! Stand where I tell you to stand. Oh, I have tamed lions before to-day. You needn't look at me so—I'm not afraid of your teeth."
Grace's fear was not inspired by dread of exposure, but by the realization that she had done what she could not have forgiven in another. But for the supreme moment she might never have realized the real nature of her feeling for her employer. She stood appalled and humiliated, yet her spirit rose in hot revolt because it was Fran who had found her in Gregory's arms. She glared at her defiantly. "Yes," said Fran somberly, "that's my profession, lion-taming. I'm the 'World-Famous Fran Nonpareil'. Go to your typewriter, Grace Noir, I say—Go!"
Grace could not speak without filling every word with concentrated hate: "You wicked little spy, your evil nature won't let you see anything but evil in the fruits of your eavesdropping. You misjudge simply because it would be impossible for you to understand."
"I see by your face that you understand—pity you hadn't waked up long ago." Fran looked from one to the other with a dark face. Whether justly or not, they reminded her of two lions in a cage; she stood between, to keep them apart, lest, combining their forces, they spring upon her.
"I understand nothing of what you imagine you know," Grace said stammeringly. "I haven't committed a crime. Stop looking at me as if I had—do you hear?" Her tone was passionate: "I am what I have always been-" Did she say that to reassure herself? "What do you mean, Fran? I command you to put your suspicions in words."
"I have had them roar at me before to-day," cried Fran. "What I mean is that you're to leave the house this day."
"I shall not leave this house, unless Mr. Gregory orders it. It would be admitting that I've done wrong, and I am what I have always been. What you saw…I will say this much, that it shall never happen again. But nothing has happened that you think, little impostor, with your evil mind…I am what I have always been. And I'm going to prove that you are an impostor in a very short time."
Fran turned to Hamilton Gregory. "Tell her to go," she said threateningly. "Tell her she must. Order it. You know what I mean when I say she must go, and she needn't show her claws at me. I don't go into the cage without my whip. Tell her to go."
He turned upon Fran, pushed to utter desperation. "No—you shall go!" he said between clenched teeth.
"Yes!" exclaimed Grace. It was a hiss of triumphant hate.