who is this woman ?" murmured Juliette Marny close to her ear.
The young girl looked pale and very agitated, and her large eyes were fixed in unmistakable wrath upon the French actress before her.

A little startled, not understanding Juliette's attitude, Marguerite tried to reply lightly: "This is Mademoiselle Candeille, Juliette dear," she said, affecting the usual formal introduction, "of the Varietes Theatre of Paris--Mademoiselle Desiree Candeille, who will sing some charming French ditties for us to-night." While she spoke she kept a restraining hand on Juliette's quivering arm.

Already, with the keen intuition which had been on the qui-vive the whole evening, she scented some mystery in this sudden outburst on the part of her young protegee.
But Juliette did not heed her: she felt surging up in her young, overburdened heart all the wrath and the contempt of the persecuted, fugitive aristocrat against the triumphant usurper.

She had suffered so much from that particular class of the risen kitchen-wench of which the woman before her was so typical and example: years of sorrow, of poverty were behind her: loss of fortune, of kindred, of friends--she, even now a pauper, living on the bounty of strangers.
And all this through no fault of her own: the fault of her class mayhap! but not hers! She had suffered much, and was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and of triumph with which Candeille calmly regarded her.
Afterwards she would willingly have bitten out her tongue for her vehemence, but for the moment she was absolutely incapable of checking the torrent of her own emotions.
"Mademoiselle Candeille, indeed ?" she said in wrathful scorn, "Desiree Candeille, you mean, Lady Blakeney! my mother's kitchen-maid, flaunting shamelessly my dear mother's jewels which she has stolen mayhap..." The young girl was trembling from head to foot, tears of anger obscured her eyes; her voice, which fortunately remained low--not much above a whisper--was thick and husky.
"Juliette! Juliette! I entreat you," admonished Marguerite, "you must control yourself, you must, indeed you must.

Mademoiselle Candeille, I beg of you to retire...." But Candeille--well-schooled in the part she had to play--had no intention of quitting the field of battle.