"She is lying. She was not in her mother's room at all, for I went there to see, and Mrs. Clarke had retired. She must have been up to some mischief and don't want to be found out. She had a guilty look."
Meanwhile Roma flung herself into the easy-chair before the glowing fire, stretched out her slippered feet on the thick fur rug, and gave herself up to the bitterest reflections.
"There are four people who are terribly in my way, and whom I would like to see dead! They are Liane Lester, Granny Jenks, old Doctor Jay, and Edmund Clarke, the man I have heretofore regarded as my father," she muttered vindictively.
She knew that the two last named would know neither rest nor peace till they found Liane and reinstated her in her place at Cliffdene as daughter and heiress, ousting without remorse the usurper.
"Ah, if I only knew where to find her, granny would soon put her out of my way forever!" she thought, regretting bitterly now that she had not made the old hag keep her informed of her whereabouts.
The spirit of murder was rife in Roma's heart, and she longed to end the lives of all those who stood in her way.
"I wish that Edmund Clarke would die to-night! How easy it would be if some arsenic were dropped into his sedative—some of that solution I was taking a while ago to improve my complexion," she thought darkly, resolving to wait until all was quiet and herself attempt the hellish deed.
One death already lay on her conscience, and the form of the man she had remorselessly thrust over the bluff stalked grimly through her dreams. To her soul, already black with crime, what did the commission of other deeds of darkness matter?