Even the imperturbable Mima started with surprise.
"Well?"
Madame laughed, and the laugh was not good to hear.
"I have no doubt they are relatives of my Yankee friend," she said. "Perhaps, even they live in the same house. I shall be sure to go, and then—che sarâ, sarâ!" Her voice had a fiendish threat in its angry cadence.
She went back on the stage, smiling, insolent. She looked once or twice into the box from whence the white flowers had been thrown to her, and smiled whenever she looked. And Una's blood ran cold whenever she met that smile. She instinctively felt that it was one of menace.
She was very, very glad when it was all over, and she could nestle by Eliot's side in the carriage with her cold little hand in his.
Maud and Edith rode with them, but they did not utter one word to even hint to them that Mme. Leonie, the actress, was Mme. Lorraine, the wicked woman who had been so cruel to them in New Orleans.
Both said to themselves that it did not matter now. Let her enjoy her fame, if she could, since out of her cruel plans had come their wedded happiness.
She would leave Boston to-morrow for Philadelphia, where she was to play next, and in all likelihood her path would never cross theirs again.
So, dismissing the wicked woman from their minds, Eliot and Una waited with the girls in the drawing-room for the coming of the rest of the party who were a little late.