"Dear child! How good of you to come!" she said, extending her hand with brazen determination. "It would have broken our hearts to have left without seeing you. And dear Mariposilla! and Pet Marjorie, and the good Doña Maria—how can we ever be reconciled to leave them?"
"Why is your departure compulsory?" I asked, coldly.
The woman perceived instantly that I understood her, but her control was perfect. Her will was diabolical, yet for a moment a gleam of anger darkened her eyes. Then she answered naturally:
"Dear Gladys has lost her father. She is perfectly crushed, and has wired us to come at once."
I stood like a stone, while she told again of the intimate relations that had always existed between the families.
"Gladys is just like my own child," she continued, turning away her face with the pretense of forcing a protruding Indian basket into the trunk. "We are so disappointed to miss the matinée," she said, with her face still in profile. "Sid begged to stay until to-morrow, just to see Mariposilla dance, but I persuaded him that it would be brutal to neglect Gladys one moment longer than the necessary time for our miserable journey."
Before I could reply she had crossed the room to her son, who was fumbling over a finished trunk.
"Don't touch the things in the tray," she cried, nervously. "I never saw such a boy. This morning he actually packed books on top of my best tea-gown."
I knew that the insolence of the woman had cowed me. She was sublime in her villainy.
I stood helplessly rooted to the spot which I had first selected upon entering the room. Too weak to stand unsupported, I leaned against the table. My perverse silence must have astonished the woman, but she talked on loquaciously, appearing not to notice my lack of interest.