"There’s that Courtland sitting up-stairs at the table with them, and me expected to wait on him. Her ‘war secretary,’ she calls him. He’s no more a secretary than I am. Secretaries write your letters for you, but Courtland--_he_ couldn’t write letters for any one. He’s _ignorant_. And him to be set up above me, like this! And my young man’s a sergeant already. Why isn’t Courtland in the army, like his betters? Well!" she added piously. "They may be exalted above me now, but the time will come when they’ll all be cast down so far below me I can’t even so much as see them!" And this meant Angelica, too. She was among the black sheep, the unworthy and the wicked, temporarily set above the righteous, only to be hurled down and utterly destroyed. Annie bade her good night with dour relish, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious triumph. She knew how it would be with this Angelica! CHAPTER TWELVE I "Then why _did_ you come here?" asked Vincent. "Because your mother asked me," said Angelica. Vincent shook his head. "I don’t believe you," he said. "You’ve got something up your sleeve. I know you! All your moves are calculated." He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning. "No!" he insisted. "It’s something to do with me. One of your damned Italian schemes!" "It’s nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all. I don’t bother myself about you any more." He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white linen frock and her trim hair. It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force her to abandon this calmness, this superiority. "You’d better bother about me!" he said. "You’d better remember that it’s only through my pity for you that you’re here. With half a word I could have you turned out of the house!" She was imperturbable. "I don’t think so," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about this, anyway, and it might as well be now. I don’t think Eddie would believe you, if you told him." He laughed. "My dearest girl, there’s a living proof!" "No," she said, looking steadily at him. "There isn’t." "What have you done? Murdered your baby, or sold it? That would suit your thrifty soul better. You do love money, don’t you, Angelica, better than an inconvenient baby!" "What baby?" she inquired. "My God!" he cried, staring at her. "The impudence of the hussy! So that’s the tack! You’re going to lie out of it? Going to deny you ever had a child?" "And how do you know I did? You never saw it, did you? How do you know it wasn’t just a trick to get money out of you?" That astounded him.