“Yes.”
The handsome, stately woman threw back her haughty head with an insolent movement that made the jets in her bonnet glitter.
“Ha! ha!” she laughed, scornfully; and the creature behind her, yellow-faced and with beady black eyes, evidently her maid, echoed her insolent mirth: “Ha! ha!”
Thea’s lovely face crimsoned with anger, and she asked, haughtily:
“Who are you, madame, and why have you entered my house in this bold manner?”
The woman came a step nearer, and held out to her a slip of cardboard.
“Read!” she said, imperatively; and, without touching it, Thea obeyed. On the white card was written, in the same small, feminine characters as the letter she had found among her toys but yesterday, a name:
“Camille de Vere.”
One moment Thea gazed in awful, statue-like quiet at the fatal card, then, with a cry of fear, she fled toward Alan’s crib for protection. She believed that she was gazing upon a ghost.
But how horribly real it all seemed—the two women, their faces, their voices. A shuddering horror overpowered her, and with the echo of her startled cry in their ears they saw her slip down senseless at their feet.