"Thank you kindly, ma'am. I believe you, but will you humor an old woman's whim and persuade Miss Roma to come to me herself?" persisted granny, with veiled eagerness.
"I will do so if I can, but I cannot promise certainly," Mrs. Clarke replied, rather coldly, as she rustled through the door.
She was vexed and disappointed. Everything seemed to go against her that day. How angry Roma would be at the old woman's obstinacy, and how insolently she would talk to her, looking down on her from her height of pride and position. It was as well to give up the thought of having Liane come at all.
And how strangely like the old woman was to Mrs. Jenks, the nurse she had had with her when Roma was born. She was mistaken, of course, since the old creature said so; but she had such a good memory for faces, and she had never thought of two such faces alike in the world.
But if Mrs. Clarke went away perturbed from this rencontre, she left granny sadly flustrated also.
The old creature sat down in the doorway, her chin in her hands, and gazed with starting eyes at the grand carriage from Cliffdene rolling away.
"Who would have dreamed such a thing?" she muttered. "Here I have lived two years neighbor to the Clarkes, and never suspected their identity, and never heard their girl's name spoken before! Well, well, well! And they want Liane to wait on Roma. Ha, ha, ha!"
She seemed to find the idea amusing, for she kept laughing at intervals in a grim, mocking fashion, while she watched the road to Cliffdene as if she had seen a ghost from the past.
"Will the girl come, as I wish? Will she condescend to cross old granny's humble threshold? I should like to see her in her pride and beauty. Perhaps she, too, might have a dollar to fling to a poor old wretch like me!" she muttered darkly.