“Yes, madam!”
“And all by this same dear friend?”
A peculiar look accompanied this question, while Isabel’s eyes gleamed in wicked triumph.
She could see whither these questions were tending, if innocent Brownie did not.
“They were,” she said.
“Was this friend a gentleman, Miss Douglas?”
For one moment there came into the young girl’s lovely eyes a look of perplexity and astonishment, followed by one of blank horror.
Then all the royal blood in her Douglas veins sprang to arms!
The rich color surged up from her enraged heart over her neck and face; up, up, as the full force of this horrible thought nearly drove her mad, until it lost itself among the bands of shining hair, and tingled to her fingertips. Then it all receded, leaving her colorless as marble, and, in her proud indignation, like some avenging spirit.
“Mrs. Coolidge,” she said, in the same quiet, ladylike tones, but they made the woman shiver notwithstanding, “your language and insinuation is the grossest insult to me, and again I demand an immediate explanation.”