party in the mirror beside the keys, struck up the familiar wedding march, almost the girl expected the dulcet strains of Lohengrin to backslide into hideous ragtime.
Truly Carlotta was having at least part of her revenge.
The veil was shivering now, as the mist of green leaves around the silver birch when the slender trunk under it is trembling, too. Was she actually going mad—stark, staring mad? Where was the old loyalty, the old sweetness of life? For one black moment she hated the strangers, she hated herself, she hated everybody. She could have screamed, and, had she been less of a Spartan, would have fallen in one of Stella's statuesque faints, but instead, she straightened herself—slowly—as if to shake off the spell, and dug her nails deep into her palms, muttering,—"I've promised—I must go through with it," then started up the aisle.
Meanwhile, the woman outside, who had returned to her strange eerie on the headstone, was not realizing this phase of her revenge. She was all unconscious of any preternatural gifts, and her conversation was pitched in another key than the sublime or horrific. She was at the moment replying angrily to her taunting companion:
"For Gawd's sake, leave me alone. If you had what's comin' to you, you'd be lyin' at right angles to where you're standing now, and six feet under."
"Nerves, feminine nerves!" exclaimed MacAllister, but Carlotta turned on him in a fury.
"What are you goin' to do about it? Haven't you gotta plan? I thought you wasn't solid above the shoulders."
