“And you sit here when you know that, and run the chance of having that maid whom she has had for years tell her that her father is dead!” Ismay flung out her hands in exasperation. “Can’t you see that if any one tells her but you or I we shall be outside of it all to Cristiane? Move, please.” Mrs. Trelane’s chair blocked her path to the door. “I’m going to tell her this minute.” With the grace of an angry animal, she was out of the room and up the corridor to Cristiane’s door. Jessie, the girl’s own maid, opened it, her face swelled with crying. “She’s asleep still, the poor lamb!” the woman whispered. With unnatural strength Ismay kept the contempt from her face; the woman was in a very luxury of woe, and would have blurted out her bad news, without doubt, the very instant her mistress awoke. What luck that she had come home in time! “Oh, Jessie!” she said softly. “It’s so dreadful. And you must be tired. Go and get your tea, and I’ll stay till you come back.” Jessie cast a glance backward at the bed. Cristiane, in a white dressing-gown, slept like a baby, her rose-leaf lips just parted, her lovely cheek flushed. There was no sign of her waking till dinner, and down-stairs there would be tea and muffins, and solemn waggings of the head. Cook would be telling her dreams--she was a great one for dreams. The prospect was too tempting. “Thank you, miss,” she said. “I’d be glad of a cup of tea. I’ll be back in a jiffy; long before she wakes.” “Then you’ll be a clever woman, my good Jessie!” the girl thought, as she nodded and passed silently by the woman, who stood respectfully out of her way. She looked around the room, where a fire burned softly between brass andirons, where the floor was covered with a pale-blue and rose carpet, and the walls hung with blue silk that was covered with pink roses. At the side of the bed, where she might slip her bare feet upon it as she got up in the mornings, was Cristiane’s only legacy from her mother, a great, white bearskin, brought long ago from farthest Russian snows. Not one atom of the prodigal luxury about the room was lost on those green, dilated eyes that stared so mercilessly. The very silver of the toilet-trays and bottles, the white vellum binding of the rows of books, the rose velvet dressing-gown lined with white fur that hung by the bedside, each and all struck Ismay with a separate stab. “I will have them all before I die--all!” she said deliberately. “And she’s got to help me, for now, at least, I can’t turn out into the world again after I’ve seen this.” Noiselessly she turned and bolted the door; she would have no maid coming to interfere with her work. With that same silent, sinuous grace she walked to the bedside, and if there had been eyes to see her as she knelt there they might have looked away as at the sight of a snake ready to strike.