Berenice’s heart gave a wild, startled leap as she obeyed.
They were all there together, the sisters with their husbands, the senator and Rosalind, all planning for the wedding that Berenice knew must never be.
The senator placed a chair for her and started when he saw her pallid face with the dark circles around the heavy eyes. Even her little hands were trembling with terrible agitation.
“Really, Berenice, you look ill this morning. Did you have a bad night, dear?” Lucile asked, with affectionate interest.
“Yes, I had a very bad night. I could not sleep. Something troubled my mind,” she faltered.
“You must learn not to take your troubles to bed with you, child,” declared Marie; “it’s the worst plan in the world. But stay with us and we will divert you, talking about the wedding. Do you think this room will do, if we order some flowers? It is very small, to be sure, but there will be no invited guests. Poor Rosalind has not even a wedding gown of white, except an old torn lace robe that she brought in her dressing bag with her, to see if the clever lacemakers of France could mend it.”
“Yes, it is a priceless, real lace gown,” explained Rosalind, “that I wore at a ball at Bonair one night, and some clumsy partner of mine must have put his foot through the edge of the flounce and torn it, for there’s a piece as large as your hand torn out and missing, though the servants searched the ballroom carefully for it next morning. You remember the very night, Berry,” graciously, “for you played on the Bonair stage that night in ‘A Wayside Flower.’”
Berenice parted her dry lips with a sort of gasp, and murmured, in husky tones:
“Oh, yes, I should remember it, I think, for it was on that same night the disguised fortune teller, my secret enemy, tried to murder me by pushing me into the bear pit, hoping Zilla would kill me in her rage over being disturbed with her young.”
“Oh, that terrible night; don’t recall it!” shuddered Rosalind, adding, to change the subject: “My misfortune with my costly lace gown was as nothing compared to your dreadful accident.”