Faynie drew back with a startled cry.
In a single instant, with the swiftness of a lioness, the woman who had been examining the desk, cleared the space that divided her from the girl, and clutched her by the shoulder.
"You!" she panted, in a voice that was scarcely human, it was so full of venomous hatred. "You!" she repeated, flinging the girl from her, as though she had been something vile to the touch. "How dare you come here?"
Faynie looked at her for a moment with dilated eyes gazing out from her pale face.
Had her stepmother suddenly gone mad? was the thought that flashed through the girl's brain.
"I—I have come back to my father, and—and to his home—and mine. Any explanation I have to offer will be made to him alone."
The woman laughed a sneering, demoniac laugh, and her clutch on the girl's shoulder grew stronger, fiercer.
"How lovely, how beautifully worded, how dutiful!" she sneered. "By that I judge that you have not been keeping abreast of the times, or you would have known, girl, that your father is dead, and that he has disinherited you, leaving every dollar of his wealth to me."
"Dead!" Faynie repeated the words in an awful whisper.
It seemed to her that every drop of blood in her veins seemed suddenly turned to ice. A mist swam before her eyes and she put out her hand gropingly, grasping the back of the nearest chair for support.