Dead! Queenie thinks at first, but as she bends over her, she finds to her disappointment that is but a swoon.
For a moment she stands gazing down at her evil work with a fiendish smile curling her lips.
“This is the first step I have taken in the plot to part this girl most effectually from the man I love, and have set myself to win,” she muttered in a hard voice, adding: “Why should I not? For he loves me—not her.”
She hears the maid’s step along the corridor, and hurries to the door to intercept her.
“The same gentleman who called yesterday,” thought the maid under her breath, as she presented Mr. John Dinsmore’s card to her mistress, saying aloud: “The gentleman asked to see Miss Jess.”
“Very well,” returned the beautiful young widow, her hand trembling in spite of her apparent calmness, as she took the bit of pasteboard.
“She will lie there, in just that condition until long after my interview with him is ended,” she muttered. “Still it is always wise to take every possible precaution.”
So saying, as she glided from the apartment, she turned and locked the door noiselessly, and slipped the key into her pocket.
On her way down to the drawing-room she paused long enough in her own apartment to secure a letter which she had spent long hours the night before in writing.
In the drawing-room below John Dinsmore was pacing up and down impatiently enough at the delay, for he was sure his little wife would fairly fly down to his arms upon learning he was there.