“I guess I will,” said Félicia, as she drew the curtain aside. “Say!” she cried shrilly, “and what are you doing here, Michael?”
She seemed to grow taller as he looked at her, and towered above him so magnificently that he was conscious of actual fear. He tried to bluster the matter out.
“And if I am here, madame, has not your husband a right to—to——”
“To go through my private papers?” with deadly quietness.
“Exactly. I claim that right, and I exercise it.”
“And to break into my bureau?” Her quick eye had caught sight of the knife, and she took possession of it before he could prevent her. “Thanks for the warning. You may claim your right just as much as ever you want to, but you’ve exercised it for the last time.”
“In that you will find yourself mistaken, madame.”
“You are pretty much mistaken if you think you’ll have the chance of doing it again. Why, you little miserable——” she stopped suddenly. “But I won’t call you names. You’ll hear plenty before long from other people.”
“In your present rank of life, madame, it is not the custom to make the world a sharer in family disputes.”
“It is unavoidable at times,” drawled Félicia—“when a separation is to be arranged, for instance.”