Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/158

 the stories your clever newspapers have published about me." She laughed scornfully and shrugged her shoulders.

"I tell you it is over," she said,—"over before it began. Your little boy is quite safe. I should not permit that he pass the entrance of this hotel," she added curtly.

Miss Herrick rose with a feeling of keen relief that the interview and the incident were ended.

"Thank you for telling me about it so unreservedly," she said, with warmth, as they shook hands. "I'm very glad the boy is going home."

She hurried away, and Dolorita looked after her, an odd expression on her beautiful selfish face. "She did me a good turn once," she said to her maid, in Spanish, "when she published my answer to that Van Dreer story. Now we are quits. But she is a good woman, and so she would never have believed me if I had told her the truth. I shocked him purposely, and I sent him away—because she asked it. A woman like myself would believe that I might sometimes have a good