At last remembering her errand, she told him why she had come, and asked what she should say to Isabel.
“Tell her I shall not go,” he said, “but she need not remain at home for that. The carriage can be ready at any time, and Alice will tell her the rest? You’ll do it better than I.”
Alice would rather that some one else should carry to Isabel tidings which she felt intuitively would be received with more pleasure than pain, but if Frederic requested it of her she would do it, and she started to return. To her the night and the day were the same, and ordinarily it mattered not whether there were lamps in the hall or not, but now, as she passed from the library into the adjoining room, there came over her a feeling of such utter loneliness and desolation that she turned back and said to Frederic:
“Will you go with me up the stairs, for now that Marian is dead, the night is darker than it ever was before.”
He appreciated her feelings, and taking her by the hand, led her to the door of Isabel’s room. Very impatiently Isabel had waited for her, wishing to know what hour Frederic intended starting, and if there would be time for Luce, her waiting maid, to curl her long, black hair. Accidentally she had overheard a gentleman say that if she wore curls she would be the most beautiful woman in Kentucky, and as he was to be present at the party she determined to prove his assertion.
“I hope that young one stays well,” she said, angrily, as the moments went by, and at last, as Alice did not come, she bade Luce put the iron in the fire, and commence her operations.
The negress accordingly obeyed the orders, and six long curls were streaming down the lady’s back, while a seventh was wound around the hissing iron in close proximity to her ear, when Alice came in, and hurrying up to her side, began:
“Oh, Miss Huntington, poor, dear Marian wasn’t dead all the time they thought she was. She was in New York, with Mrs. ——”
She did not finish the sentence; for, feeling certain that her treachery was about to be disclosed, the guilty Isabel jumped so suddenly as to bring the hot iron directly across her ear and a portion of her forehead. Maddened with the pain, and a dread of impending disgrace, she struck the innocent girl a blow which sent her reeling across the floor.
“Oh, Lordy!” exclaimed Luce, untwisting the hair so rapidly that a portion of it was torn from the head—“oh, Lordy! Miss Isabel, Alice never tached you;” and, throwing the iron upon the hearth, she hurried to the prostrate child, who had thrown herself upon the lounge and was sobbing so loud and hysterically that Isabel herself was alarmed, and while bathing her blistered ear, tried to stammer out some apology for what she had done.