While these thoughts flash through his mind, the gay hum of voices die away. The party have gone out of sight, and a sudden resolution comes into Vane's mind. "I'll go and breakfast with the old gentleman again," he thinks. "After all it's only the proper thing to call and inquire for his health. Of course Reine will not have come in from her walk yet." In this he deceives himself. Reine is there by the side of the old man's couch, with a lapful of rosy-tinted shells which she is displaying with a good deal of childish pleasure in their acquisition. "Sir George found this one; isn't it a beauty?" she is saying, vivaciously, as the door opens, and Mr. Charteris is ushered in. A start, a blush, a dimpling smile. She rises, gathering her treasures, child-like, in her apron overskirt. Mr. Charteris, vouchsafing her a careless nod, passes on to Mr. Langton. "I hope I find you better this morning, and rested?" he observes, taking the chair Reine places, without seeming to see her. "A trifle easier, yes," Mr. Langton responds, with more than ordinary graciousness, and then Vane steals a furtive glance at Reine. Some of the brightness that came into her face at his entrance has faded from it. She has quietly seated herself again, her long lashes droop to the shells in her lap, which she fingers rather at random. "So the baronet helped you gather shells," he remarks, condescendingly. She looks up, with returning smiles. "Yes," she returns, spreading the pretty collection out to view. "Will you look at them? Some are quite pretty." "Reine has been telling me about your friend," put in Mr. Langton. "He was very kind." "Not my friend, a mere acquaintance," Vane replies with acerbity. "I saw him a few times in London; he is wild, rather." "Indeed! and _I_ thought him so nice," Reine says, with dismay. "So he _is_ nice; wildness, a little, you know, doesn't count," Vane hastens to say, ashamed of the spirit in which he has spoken a moment before. "Sir George is unexceptionable, rich, titled, and all that. He is what the ladies term a most desirable _parti_. A pity you are a-a-already married, Reine." "Were I free he could be nothing to me," Reine retorts, a crimson flame coming to her cheeks. Mr. Langton, struck by something in Vane's tone, looks from one to the other of the flushed faces, and says, laughingly: "O-ho, my fine young lad, jealous, are you?" Mr. Charteris is positively indignant. "Don't tease, if you please, Mr. Langton," he retorts, with immense dignity. "Jealousy only exists with love, you know. And I haven't pretended to fall in love with my wife yet!" With this most ungenerous stab, he flies out of the room in a passion. The rosy-lipped shells fall unheeded from Reine's lap to the floor as she rises and stands before her uncle, the bitter tears of shame crowding into her eyes.