About midnight, the very night after Joan had taken lodging in Widow Milton’s cottage, Mabel Saker was in her bedroom unravelling her dark hair. To her came Ophelia fully dressed, her face pale as china, her lips almost bloodless, her eyes peculiarly bright. There was a restrained fury in her look, an atmosphere about her that boded ill for the friendship between the two.
It was a woman’s quarrel that night, swift, malicious, and contemptible. As is the case in some such feminine fracas, the disputants grew the more bitter, the more icily eager with every word. Gibe stabbed at gibe and taunt at taunt. There was no generosity in their passion to give human pathos to the scene.
Ophelia leaned against an escritoire and watched with her hard blue eyes the flushed and dishevelled woman before her. They were both breathless for the moment, like two duellists who shrink back dazed after some fierce locking of their swords. The younger woman tossed back her hair, her bosom rising and falling rapidly as in an ecstasy of unspeakable anger.
“Are you mad?” she said. “This is too utterly ridiculous.”
Ophelia laughed, her white face shining with her scorn.
“It is the fashion to think others ridiculous,” she retorted, “when all the folly is one’s own.”
“Tell me, whose fault is it?”
“I am asking you the same question.”
“Because a man pays me small attentions am I to snub him like a barmaid?”
“Small attentions—well phrased, indeed!”