To her surprise she found her mother standing there, her hands pressed upon her breast, her haggard eyes wild with fear.
"What are you doing here?" cried Jessica, roughly, now that there was no longer a necessity to oil her treacherous tongue. "You look like a fright! Ever since that milk-sop, Olney, was reported murdered, you have gone about like an uneasy ghost. You've even neglected your hair until there is a black stripe as wide as my fingers down the middle of your head. For the Lord's sake, pull yourself together, and stop acting like a frightened school miss who has found a mouse nibbling at her bread and butter. Go and color your hair!"
"Jessica, have you no heart at all? What is it that you intend to do? Oh, I wish to God I had never consented to allow the child of another woman to come into our household. I wish—"
"Oh, let up!" interrupted her respectful daughter, carelessly. "You've done it, and there is no use in grieving over spilled milk. We've got her money, and I'll have a darned sight more of it before I get through with life, or I'll miss my reckoning."
"Jessica! Jessica, for the love of Heaven! what is it that you mean to do?"
"Oh, rot! Don't stand there wringing your hands and whining like a whipped cur. If you had any blood in your veins you would help me, and not make difficulties the greater. What do I mean to do?"—her face darkening cruelly—"I mean to have the deepest and most complete revenge upon those two that woman ever planned. I have thought it all out carefully and well, and the best of it is, that she shall execute my every wish. I mean to ruin her body and soul. And as for him—well, his punishment shall remain my secret. And now there is something that I want you to do."
"Oh, Jessica, I can not! I—"
The girl turned swiftly and caught her mother by the wrist, her fingers closing upon it like bands of steel. Her eyes, burning in their fierce wrath, looked into those shrinking ones, and her voice came in a heavy, hoarse whisper:
"You will obey me, do you hear? You will obey me, or—"