"How dare you come into my presence?" she said to the woman. "How can you have the face to look at me, after the shameful way in which you have behaved?"
"Blame your friend for that," answered Clara, doggedly. "I would not have come at all had I known you were here."
"Exactly. That is why I did not think it necessary you should know of Mrs. Carson's presence here," exclaimed Aldean, smoothly.
"Mrs. Carson!" sneered Clara, with a contemptuous laugh. "Oh yes; Mrs. Carson, of course."
Olive looked at the woman with a flush of anger. "No insolence, if you please," she said. "And you!" turning on her shrinking husband--"who and what are you, pray?"
"Carlo Boldini," he replied almost inaudibly.
"My father was. He married an Englishwoman."
"So I am Signora Boldini?" said Olive, bitterly.
Clara laughed again. "Oh yes! Signora Boldini," she repeated, seating herself complacently beside her companion.
The two sat there like prisoners in the dock. Aldean began to feel positively judicial. The woman was horribly insolent.
"I would suggest, for your own sake, that you endeavour to restrain yourself," he said, moving to the end of the room in search of pen and ink. "You are in quite enough trouble as it is."
"Oh, I don't mind her insolence, Lord Aldean," said Olive, quietly; "she can do me no harm."
"Don't be too sure of that!" flashed out Miss Trall, vindictively.
"Clara, Clara!" implored Boldini, "it's best to say nothing--least said, soonest mended."
Aldean, arranging his writing materials on a table at Olive's elbow, looked up. "I fear you will find that proverb doesn't apply to what is to come," said he cheerfully. "Mrs. Carson, as this lady may be called for the present, will question you sufficiently closely as to the various details of the conspiracy. You will answer her questions categorically while I write them down. The little précis will then be signed by you both and witnessed by myself."
"And if we refuse this confession, as you call it," questioned Clara, who withal was obviously uneasy.
"Oh, in that case, as I have told you before, I hand you over to the police. Now, then, come along; we have no time to waste on you. Begin."
Jim dipped his pen into the ink and waited; while Olive, after a sharp glance at the two before her, launched into the examination. Reversing her previous attitude, she addressed herself exclusively to Boldini. She judged a studied indifference to be more effectual from woman to woman.