epped quietly over the back of the sofa
and stood bending over me. I looked up. His eyes were clear, his face
alive with intuition. Though Adelaide was close by, she was oblivious;
her eyes were cast upward and her fingers lay languid in her lap. Ann,
more lively, introduced a note here and there into my song to her own
satisfaction. Mrs. Somers I could not see; but I stopped and, giving
the music stool a turn, faced her. She met me with her pale, opaque
stare, and began to swing her foot over her knee; her slipper, already
down at her heel, fell off. I picked it up in spite of her negative
movement and hung it on the foot again.

"I shall speak with you presently," she whispered, glancing at
Desmond.

He heard her and his face flashed with the instinct of sport, which
made me ashamed of any desire for a struggle with her.

"Good-night," I said abruptly, turning away.

"We are all sleepy except this exemplary housewife with her napkins,"
cried Ann. "We will leave her."

"Cassandra," said Adelaide, when we were on the stairs, "how well you
look!"

Ann, elevating her candle, remarked my eyes shone like a cat's.

"Hiticutt's tea was too strong," added Adelaide; "it dilates the
pupils. I am sorry you are going away," and she kissed me; this favor
would have moved me at any other time, but now I rejoiced to see her
depart and leave me alone. I sat down by the toilet table and was
arranging some bottles, when Mrs. Somers rustled in. Out of breath,
she began haughtily:

"What do you mean?"

A lethargic feeling crept over me; my thoughts wandered; I never spoke
nor stirred till she pulled my sleeve violently.

"If you touch me it will rouse me. Did a child of yours ever inflict a
blow upon you?"

She turned purple with rage, looming up before my vision like a peony.

"When are you going home?"

I counted aloud, "Sunday--Monday," and stopped at Wednesday. "Ben is
going back with me."

"_He_ may go."

"And not Desmond?"

"Do you know Desmond?"

"Not entirely."

"He has played with such toys as you are, and broken them."

"Alas, he is hereditarily cruel! Could _I_ expect not to be broken?"

She caught up a glass goblet as if to throw it, but only grasped it so
tight that it shivered. "There goes one of the Pickersgill treasures,
I am sure," I thought.

"I am already scarred, you see. I have been 'nurtured in
convulsions.'"

The action seemed to loosen her speech; but she had to nerve herself
to say