Miss Susan sat still and listened. She had to keep silence, though her heart beat so that it seemed to be escaping out of her sober breast, and the blood filled her veins to bursting.
Heaven help her! here was her punishment. Fiery passion blazed in her, but she durst not betray it; and to keep it down—to keep it silent—was all she was able to do. She answered, faltering,—
“You are mistaken; you are mistaken. Herbert will do nothing. Besides, some one could write and tell you what he says.”
“Pardon! but I move not; I leave not,” said Giovanna. She enjoyed the triumph. “I am a mother,” she said; “Madame Suzanne knows; and mothers sacrifice everything for the good of their children—everything. I am able for the sacrifice,” she said, looking down upon Miss Susan with a gleam almost of laughter—of fun, humor, and malicious amusement in her eyes.
To reason with this creature was like dashing one’s self against a stone wall. She was impregnable in her resolution. Miss Susan, feeling the blow go to her heart, pushed her chair back into the corner, and hid herself, as it were. It was a dark corner, where her face was in comparative darkness.
“I cannot struggle with you,” she said, in a piteous whisper, feeling her lips too parched and dry for another word.
CHAPTER XXIX.
“Going to stay till Herbert comes back! but, my dear Aunt Susan, since you don’t want her—and of course you don’t want her—why don’t you say so?” cried Everard. “An unwelcome guest may be endured for a day or two, or a week or two, but for five or six months—”
“My dear,” said Miss Susan, who was pale, and in whose vigorous frame a tremble of weakness seemed so out of place, “how can I say so? It would be so—discourteous—so uncivil—”
The young man looked at her with dismay. He would have laughed had she not been so deadly serious. Her face was white and drawn, her lips quivered slightly as she spoke. She looked all at once a weak old woman, tremulous, broken down, and uncertain of herself.