“You mean, despicable—I don’t know what to call you,” she said. “I’ve a great mind to throw it all up, and tell what you’re capable of.”
“As you please,” returned Mabella, coolly. “I’m getting rather sick of it myself. But remember, you can’t tell on me without telling on yourself. It wouldn’t, after all, matter so very much to me, only a house the less to visit at; but it would be uncommonly unpleasant for you. Your father would never forgive you for playing tricks on his guests, and you couldn’t pack up and go off comfortably enough, as I could.”
Trixie looked blacker and blacker; there was truth in Mabella’s words.
“I haven’t played tricks, if it comes to that,” she said. “I’ve only connived, to a certain extent, at what you’re doing; and what you’re after just now I don’t understand in the least.”
“Wait a bit and you’ll see,” said Miss Forsyth. “We may as well have some fun for our pains. Be sensible, Trixie. After all, no one will be any the worse for it in the end, and it will be very wholesome for some people to be brought down a peg or two.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Trixie, sulkily.
“Find ways and means to confide to Imogen that Rex Winchester is coming to-day, and that he will be walking up alone from the station at a certain hour. He wanted Florence to meet him, but she can’t. She had promised to go to Catborough to luncheon. You might insinuate that Florence wants to keep him all to herself, which is true. She never tells any one anything. I often wonder you and Alicia stand it. Ten to one Imogen will jump at the chance of meeting him unobserved. She hates her mother’s silly meddling, I can see.”
“And what will happen then?” demanded Trixie.
“Not much to hurt Imogen—I don’t believe she really cares for him, it’s only gratified vanity—but I hope and believe Major Rex will have a more thoroughly uncomfortable quart d’heure than he has ever experienced,” said Mabella, smacking her lips, so to say, in anticipation. “And you will be revenged, Trix, gloriously revenged on him, for his priggish meddling. And it will be all his own fault! That’s the beauty of it; he won’t be able to blame any one else—not a shadow of suspicion will fall on you or me, if only you are sensible.”
“And,” she added, to herself, in a lower tone, “I shall be revenged. What are Trixie’s babyish wrongs compared to mine?”