“I’d like to know who the devil you are?  Comin’ right here, wormin’ your way into a place that don’t belong to you, gettin’ on the soft side of my aunt an’ uncle, I s’pose, and thinkin’ to grab all they got when they die.  Oh, I know your kind, miss!

“But I’ll show you up.  I’ll let ’em know what’s what and who’s who.  They must be precious soft to take a girl like you in and think she’s Ida Bostwick.  How dare you?”

She stamped her foot.  She advanced upon the other threateningly.  But the girl she had accused did not retreat.  The flush of outrage and that haughty expression were still upon her countenance.  She spoke very firmly but in a voice so low that it contrasted the more sharply with the enraged squall of her opponent.  She asked: 

“Who are you, if you please?”

“You’ve cheek to ask me.  I’d ought to spit on you, so I had!  But I’ll tell you who I am—­and it’ll hold you for a while, I guess.  I am Ida May Bostwick.  You know full and well you are makin’ out to these rich relations of mine that you are me.  I’ll show you up, miss!  I’ll have you whipped—­or jailed—­or something.  The gall of you!”

The other girl heard her with unchanging face.  Somehow, that steady, unshrinking look gave Ida May Bostwick pause.  It was she who recoiled.

CHAPTER XX

THE LIE

The girl who had seized upon the chance of becoming Ida May Bostwick, and so escaping the horror and despair that enshrouded Sheila Macklin like a filthy mantle, stood after the first blast as firm as a rock under the torrent of vituperation and rage which poured from the other girl’s lips.

The real Ida May—­weak, save in venomous hate, unstable as water, as shallow as a pool of glass—­could have joined issue in a hair-pulling, face-scratching brawl.  She was of that breed and up-bringing.

Sheila Macklin’s very dignity held Ida May Bostwick at arm’s length.  With all right and title to the name and place Sheila had usurped, the new arrival was awed by the impostor’s look.  Following that first—­and merely instantaneous—­expression of horrified surprise at Ida May’s announcement of her identity, this girl, who was so secure in the confidence of the Balls and the community, proceeded to look down at the claimant of her achieved position with utter calmness.

It made the real Ida May almost afraid.  Certain as she was of her own name and the assertion of her own personality, the bold and unshaken opposition confronting her in the very look of the impostor abashed Ida May Bostwick.  After her first outbreak she was silenced.

“Do you really know what you are saying?” the girl in possession asked.  “Are you aware that I am Ida May Bostwick?  There certainly cannot be two girls of the same name, both related to Mrs. Prudence Ball.  That is too ridiculous.”

The other gasped.  Though red and white by turn, from impotence and rage, her fury was quelled under the look of the more composed young woman.