elative to leave San Francisco before her son found her out or she had
time more fully to disgrace him. But how to approach the most
unapproachable woman she had ever known with so delicate a proposition
was a question that made her toss about her ancestral bed and kept the
blood in her brain. She recalled the slip of paper announcing a
prize-fight, and wondered at her stupidity; for she had heard something
of the resources of blasee women ere this.

Finally she fell asleep. She was awakened by a sharp earthquake--grim
herald of the coming year! She was too well seasoned to have felt
anything more than a passing annoyance, had she not heard Lady Victoria
give a piercing scream and run from her room. Whereupon she rejoiced
wickedly, flung a wrapper across her shoulders, and went into the hall.
Gwynne was standing in his doorway, looking more asleep than awake, and
intensely disapproving. Lady Victoria was leaning against the wall, her
eyes wide with terror. Isabel took her firmly by the arm, marched her
into her room, helped her into a dressing-gown, and, pushing her into a
chair, took one opposite.

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Victoria. "I had forgotten about
earthquakes--"

"Earthquake!" said Isabel, contemptuously. "That was a mere vibration.
We had sixty-two of those last winter. If you only stay long enough we
will show you what California really can do. Every ten years or so we
have a good hard shake--enough to bring the plaster down; and every
half-century or so she gets up and turns over. I have made a specialty
of earthquakes, and could tell you extraordinary tales of some of the
great ones of the south--"

"Please do not. I prefer to forget. But don't leave me. Fancy Angelique
sleeping through such a thing!"

"Doubtless she is not in the house. All the world was out last night."

"Was it?"

"I think this as good a time as any other to tell you, Cousin Victoria,
that I saw you last night--just as the clocks were striking twelve."

"Did you?"

Her trained features did not betray her, but Isabel saw the figure under
the loose gown grow rigid and brace itself against the back of the
chair. And as Isabel stared at her, with the desperate courage born of
the sudden plunge, it seemed to her that she felt a vibration from the
nausea, the disgust, the hatred of life, the death-rattle of great
passions dying hard. She wondered again, if, given the same conditions,
she would have differed much from the woman