"Ha! ha!" echoed Mrs. Fielding, and there was a sound in her voice that was terrible to hear—the tones of incipient madness.
There was madness in her eyes, too, so horribly they glittered as she sprung toward Flower, and all in an instant buried her working white fingers in the girl's long tresses.
"Daisy Forrest, I shall kill you!" she screamed, with an awful, blood-curdling laugh; and dragging her victim down upon her knees, she tried to clasp her fingers around the fair white throat of her hated rival's child, and strangle her life out.
In another moment murder would have been done, but fortunately the monomaniac was thwarted in her deadly purpose, for her maddened shriek had brought the servants rushing to the scene, and Jewel, who had been silently gloating over the terrible deed, realized that her plans would be thwarted if this went further, and her crazed mother murdered poor Flower for her unconscious transgression.
So with her own white, jeweled hands she assisted the servants in their efforts to drag Mrs. Fielding away from her victim, succeeding only just in time, for Flower was discovered unconscious upon the floor, and some time elapsed before she even breathed again, so terrible had been the onslaught of her enemy.
But Mrs. Fielding was for the time a raving mad woman. She had to be bound and locked into a chamber alone while the man-servant ran all the way to town to bring a physician.
The remaining servants crowded around Jewel and begged to hear what had been the cause of the strange scene they had witnessed.
She explained satisfactorily to all, when she replied, angrily:
"My sister had gone astray and disgraced us, and when mamma found it out quite suddenly just now she went mad with horror, and would have slain her if your timely entrance had not prevented her rash deed."