"Not tonight, dear. I feel as if I should go mad to face any one tonight, even my own conscience."
"As you will," Jessica murmured calmly.
She stood there until the door had closed, shutting Carlita in, and then a cold, scornful, half-triumphant laugh escaped her.
Her mother caught her arm in a grasp like iron.
"For God's sake, come away!" she gasped. "What is this thing that you have done? What is this vengeance that you are planning?"
"That I have almost accomplished," corrected Jessica, looking into her face with a fiendish sort of chuckle. "Never mind. I shall not tell you. With your white-livered cowardice you might ruin it at the last moment, and it shall not fail. Oh, go away, with your eternal whining! Do you think that I will forgive her for winning his heart away from me? Do you think I will forgive him for playing fast and loose? I hate them both as fiercely as you know I can hate, and they shall feel the fang of it to the last day of both their lives!"
Carlita's maid followed her to her apartment almost at once, and placed in her hand one of those little yellow envelopes that turned her faint and sick even before she had broken the seal.
"You may go, Ahbel," she exclaimed, wearily. "I shall not need you this evening."
"But the back of your jacket is quite wet, Miss de Barryos. At least you will let me remove that."
Carlita allowed herself to be divested of it rather than speak, then watched her maid with wistful longing as she left the room. When she was alone she looked at the telegram in her hand, hesitated, even put her fingers to the seal, then flung it upon the table, far from her.