"I must say something to her. It is only right. Yet—" she clasped her hands helplessly, searching the faces before her as if for some assistance. "Yet—what can I say?"
Standing there helplessly, she did not hear the parlour door open, nor see Mrs. Jervais motionlessly looking at her. Her face was not tear-stained. Only in her eyes did the others read a grief which had already crystallized into a brilliant hardness, emanating from her like the diamond cross that sparkled on her breast. She did not move from her position in the doorway, all the time gazing at Natalia with a concentrated expression that gathered intensity as she waited.
Suddenly Natalia turned and saw her. Holding out her arms impetuously she made a step towards her—then stopped. The other woman's face repelled her.
"What can I say—what can I tell you?" Natalia murmured. "You must know how I feel for you—how I suffer with you."
Mrs. Jervais' eyes seemed to be burning into the girl before her.
"Suffer! What do you know of that? Why should you suffer? You have not lost the one you love—yet." She stopped abruptly, lending a sharp accent to the last word.
Natalia drew back. The implied suggestion seemed to scream at her from the woman's blazing eyes.
"If it were not for you he would still be here." Mrs. Jervais made a step nearer. "You asked me to come here and do this for you. I did, and what has it brought me—death! It is accursed—this place of your ancestors. So were they—all of them! When they lived here it brought them nothing but death. It drove your mother to madness. And now—" her voice in its calmness grew even more sinister, "it will bring its curse upon you. Do you think a murderer could bring you any happiness?"
Natalia shrank back from her, reaching out for the steadying hand of Judge Houston.
"Mrs. Jervais," he expostulated gently, "Natalia is suffering, too. You forget that in your own grief. Have you no kind words for her?"