"The child is out of her head," said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked at Maria with covert approval. She was Ida's intimate friend, but in her heart of hearts she doubted her grief. She had once lost by death a little girl of her own. She kept thinking of her little Alice, and how she should feel in a similar case. It did not seem to her that she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase. She inveighed against the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation against Ida. It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing else. The Maria, standing before the beautiful woman swaying gently, with her eyes fixed upon the pink and gold of the vase, spoke out for the first time what was in her heart of hearts with regard to her. "You are a wicked woman," said she; "that is what you are. I don't know as you can help being wicked. I guess you were made wicked; but you _are_ a wicked woman. Your mouth smiles, but your heart never does. You act now as if you were sorry," said she, "but you are not sorry, the way my mother would have been sorry if she had lost me, the way she would have been sorry if Evelyn had been her little girl instead of yours. You are a wicked woman. I have always known it, but I have never told you so before. Now I am going to tell you. Your own child is lost, you let her be lost. You didn't look out for her. Yes, your own child is lost, and you sit there and rock!" Ida for a moment made no reply. The other women, and Gladys and Wollaston in the vestibule, listened with horror. "You have had beefsteak and fried potatoes cooked, too," continued Maria, sniffing, "and you have eaten them. You have been eating beefsteak and fried potatoes when your own child was lost and you did not know where she was!" It might have been ridiculous, this last accusation in the thin, sweet, childish voice, but it was not. It was even more terrible than anything else. Ida turned at last. "I hate you," she said slowly. "I have always hated you. You have hated me ever since I came into this house," she said, "though I have done more than your own mother ever did for you."