The pallor that had come into her face left it. Color rose softly under the exquisite skin and there came a haughty uplift of her chin. She stared back into the blazing, greenish-brown eyes of the other, her own eyes unafraid, challenging.
"Do you doubt me?" she demanded, with as much composure as though a secure position and a conscience quite at ease were hers. "Who are you? In what way are you interested in my name or in my identity?"
"Why, you—you—" The visitor was for the moment stricken speechless. But it was the speechlessness of rage—of wild and uncontrollable fury. Then she caught her breath. "You dirty cheat, you! You stand there and tell me you are Ida Bostwick? You've got gall—you certainly have got gall!
"I'd like to know who the devil you are? Comin' right here, wormin' your way into a place that don't belong to you, gettin' on the soft side of my aunt an' uncle, I s'pose, and thinkin' to grab all they got when they die. Oh, I know your kind, miss!
"But I'll show you up. I'll let 'em know what's what and who's who. They must be precious soft to take a girl like you in and think she's Ida Bostwick. How dare you?"
She stamped her foot. She advanced upon the other threateningly. But the girl she had accused did not retreat. The flush of outrage and that haughty expression were still upon her countenance. She spoke very firmly but in a voice so low that it contrasted the more sharply with the enraged squall of her opponent. She asked:
"Who are you, if you please?"
"You've cheek to ask me. I'd ought to spit on you, so I had! But I'll tell you who I am—and it'll hold you for a while, I guess. I am Ida May Bostwick. You know full and well you are makin' out to these rich relations of mine that you are me. I'll show you up, miss! I'll have you whipped—or jailed—or something. The gall of you!"
The other girl heard her with unchanging face. Somehow, that steady, unshrinking look gave Ida May Bostwick pause. It was she who recoiled.