“I’d smile if I didn’t know Julina Smith!” Norah exclaimed. “I heard she was Madame Felix and a great lady. Well, I’d of known them eyes in the dark.”
“Eureka! I thought so,” Jack said, hurrying in for the fan and making no further conversation with Norah with regard to Madame.
When left alone Norah was not quite so sure as she had been. “But I’ll satisfy myself,” she thought. “It would be like Julina to masquerade this way and not let them know who she was.”
She accordingly went to the Casino and satisfied herself that Madame was Julina. Of her intimacy with Carl she knew nothing, or in her wrath she might have exposed her at the table. In her mind Julina was only passing as a great lady whom it would be her pleasure to unmask, which she did effectually.
“Madame Felix!” she repeated at intervals through the day. “To think it should come true what she said about being rich, with diamonds, and a tail to her gown a yard long, and she not lettin’ on who she was. We are well to be rid of her.”
We all thought so, too, and breathed freer with the doors and windows of the Grand Villa closed, although I missed the excitement of watching its inmates and half wished we might have seen more of Julina.
Chapter VII.—Annie’s Story Continued.
CARL AND KATY.
Carl had been indignant at Norah when she first called out to Madame, but the moment he heard the name Julina Smith he felt, as he afterwards told Katy, as if a feather could have knocked him down. Everything connected with her, recurred to him and he knew it was Julina before she acknowledged it and came forward to meet us. I think she wanted to see him; but he did not join us, and he spent most of the day at the hotel in his room, seeing no one except Sam, who felicitated himself upon the fact that he had always mistrusted Madame.
“But I never thought of Julina,—the lyenist girl there was in town,” he said;—“with airs enough to sink a ship. Why, she’d deceive the very elect.”
This was to Carl, who made no reply. He was very sore on the subject of Madame, who had duped him so completely, and did not care to discuss her. That evening he dined with us, and was very quiet all through the dinner, during which no allusion was made to Madame. Katy and I had already talked her over by ourselves.