[CHAPTER XI.]
THE BEAUTY SHOW.
Roma was indeed surprised and angry at granny's summons. She flatly refused to go, declaring:
"The insolence of the lower classes is indeed insufferable. Why, I offered that girl a situation much more profitable than the one she holds now, and here that crazy old witch, her grandmother, wishes to annoy me with all sorts of conditions! Call on her, indeed, in her old rookery of a house! I shall do nothing of the kind, but I will write a note to the girl, at Miss Bray's, and I have no doubt she will fairly jump at the chance, without saying 'by your leave' to that old hag!"
Delighted at the idea of outwitting the insolent old woman, as she deemed her, Roma quickly dispatched a patronizing, supercilious note to Liane, and waited impatiently for the reply.
She hardly gave another thought to poor Sophie Nutter, now that she was gone. Least of all did it enter her beautiful head that the maid had quit in fear and horror at the crime she had seen her commit that night.
Mrs. Clarke, in her tenderness over Roma's feelings, had bound all the servants never to betray Sophie's wild ravings to her daughter.
So, secure in her consciousness that her terrible deed had had no witness, Roma tried to dismiss the whole affair from her mind, believing that her victim lay at the bottom of the sea and could never rise again to menace her with threats of exposure, as he had done that night, bringing down on himself an awful fate.