"Jewel, do you ever go to see mam—I mean your mother?"
"No, never! I stood her ravings at home until I became almost as mad as she was, and I have no fancy for a second experience! The doctor keeps me posted as to her condition."
"But, Jewel, will you not go and see her once? I do not believe she is mad now, for even so long ago as that day in the grave-yard she seemed to me almost sane. And, with kind treatment, she ought to have been cured by this time. Poor soul! I feel so sorry for her. I can not forget that she gave me a mother's love for seventeen years."
"The doctor never told me of her escape that time," Jewel said, angrily.
"He looked like a bad man," Flower said. "Perhaps she is in her right mind now, and you ought to take her away into a pleasant home and make her life endurable."
An angry frown drew Jewel's brows together.
"Oh, stop your preaching!" she exclaimed, impatiently. "Mamma is incurably insane, and will never come out of that asylum alive!" and with that she took her leave, smiling wickedly as she went along the broad corridors of the large hotel.
Flower began to pace quickly up and down the room, but was arrested by Marie, who caught her arm and held her back.
"Look there upon the floor, Miss Brooke," she said. "Ah, she was vair cunning. She thought we did not see her place the little box under the chair, when she stooped to arrange her skirts! Ugh, it is no doubt a dynamite bomb!"