With a sinking heart and a face as pale as death, she turned away to convey the tidings of her failure to her mother.
Mrs. Brooke, a still handsome woman of the brunette type, received the news with an ominous flash of her large black eyes.
"Little minx! she shall pay for it, dearly," she muttered, between her teeth.
"Oh, mamma, it is only thoughtlessness I think. She doesn't really mean to be disobedient," faltered Elaine, tremulously.
Her mother gave her a swift, displeased glance that silenced the excusing words on her lips.
Bertha came up, flushed from the dance, a dark, haughty beauty, three years younger than Elaine, but never owning to more than twenty years.
"Where is Mr. Kenmore? I left him with you, mamma," she said.
"He left me to seek his partner for the next dance," Mrs. Brooke answered, in a tone of repressed fury.
Bertha turned her large, flashing dark eyes on her elder sister.