"What are you trembling for?" Ivy demands, shortly. "Are you afraid I will slap you as I did last night? Well, you richly deserve it, and I don't know but that I may. Hurry, now, and fix my hair and bring my _robe de nuit_. It will be broad daylight before I get into bed. And I want to rise early to find out why Leslie did not come to the ball." Vera moves about mechanically, obeying orders, but answering never a word. A golden gleam has come into the eyes beneath the drooping lashes, a heavy, deep red spot glows in the center of her death-white cheeks. Half-frightened as she is at the thought of Ivy's rage when she learns the truth, she is yet filled with triumph at the thought of her own vengeance on her enemies, this glorious vengeance that has come to her unsought. _She_ will be Leslie Noble's wife, she will queen it over Ivy and her mother. She will wear satin and laces and diamonds, she will have French maids to wait on her, and then a sudden anguished recollection drives the blood from her heart and forces a moan of despair from her white lips--what is all her triumph since it cannot bring back the dead? She is moving to the door, having tucked the blue satin counterpane about Ivy's small figure, when the straw-gold head pops up, and the frivolous beauty recalls her. "I say, Vera, is the embroidery finished on my Surah polonaise? Because I shall want it to-morrow night to wear to Mrs. Montague's _german_. Tell your mother I shall want it without fail. I am tired of this shamming sickness. It's nothing but laziness--just _that_. Did you say it was finished?" "No," Vera answers her, through her white lips. Ivy springs up tumultuously in the bed. "Not finished!" she screams, shrilly. "Scandalous! I tell you I want it to-morrow night! I will have it--you hear! Go and tell your mother to get up this instant and go to work at it. Go and tell her--you hear?" Vera, with her hands on the latch, and that crimson spot burning dully on her cheeks, answers with sudden, passionate defiance: "I will not!" All in a moment Ivy is out of bed, and her small, claw-like fingers clutch Vera's arm, the other hand comes down in a ringing slap on Vera's cheek. "Take that, little vixen!" she hisses, furiously, "and that, and that! How dare you defy me?" Vera pushes her off with a sudden passionate defiance. "Because I am not afraid of you any longer," she says, sharply. "Because poor mamma has escaped you. She is free--she is dead!" "Dead!" Ivy screams in passionate wrath. "Dead--and the embroidery not finished on my Surah polonaise! It is just like her--the lazy, ungrateful thing! To go and die just when I needed----" But Vera slams the door between her and the rest of the heartless lament, and flies along the hall laughing like some mad thing. In truth the horrors of this dreadful night have almost unseated her reason. She shuts and bolts herself into her room, her young heart filled with wild hatred for her heartless cousin.