“Probably the woman is lame and wears glasses,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak at all, “and perhaps she squints, but I have no faith in the glass eye. Godfrey made that up. Father is not the man to marry such a monster, and then expect us to pay all due deference to her. The idea of my deferring to such a woman. I hate her. I’ll poison her, the wretch!” Julia Schuyler was terrible in her wrath, and with that expression in her flashing eyes and about the white quivering lips, she looked equal to anything, and Edith might well have trembled could she have seen the dark-faced girl, who, with clenched fists, threatened to poison her. Julia would not of course acknowledge that she really had murder in her heart, but she felt outraged, and insulted, and disgraced, and as if she must do something to avert the horrible evil threatening them all. But what could she do? To oppose her will to her father’s was like trying to move a mountain of stone with her puny strength. The mountain would not be hurt, and only she would suffer from the attempt. There was no help, no hope, and when her anger had spent itself she burst into tears and sobbed passionately, just as Emma had done from the first, but with this difference, she cried from wrath and indignant mortification, while Emma’s tears were more for the dead mother whose place was to be filled, and whose death it seemed to her now had only been yesterday. The governess, who knew that remark of any kind from herself would be resented as impertinent, wisely said nothing, while Alice, too, was silent, except as she occasionally said to Julia, “It is too bad, and I am sorry for you; sorry for us all.” Looking upon Godfrey as her own especial property, Alice felt that whatever affected the Schuylers affected her, and she was sorry accordingly for this thing about to happen, but it did not hurt her as it did Julia and Emma, who must call the strange woman mother, and who wept on until Miss Rossiter sent for them to come to her room together with Miss Creighton. She had taken some brandy, and felt better, though her heart was aching still with a dreary sense of loss, and disappointment, and disgrace, if half Godfrey had written was true, and half was all that any stretch of her imagination would allow her to believe, and when the young girls entered the room she said to them: “I have sent for you to talk over this dreadful thing, and to say that I do not credit all Godfrey’s story. He is a sad boy to exaggerate, you know. Still, let the woman be what she may, we do not want her here where we have been so happy.” Miss Rossiter’s voice faltered a little, but soon recovering herself, she continued: “No, we do not want her here; and I for one declare war,—_war to the knife!_” She spoke bitterly now, and her black eyes flashed with contemptuous scorn. “But Aunt Christine,” Emma said, “it is father’s house, and he will not let you treat her badly.”