“You are better, miss?” she cried, pertly. “Oh, no; don’t faint again. You took us for ghosts, I know, but that was a mistake. There’s been several mistakes, you see, and one of them was made by Mr. Norman de Vere when he thought his first wife was dead and took a second.” Thea lay there, too dazed and weak to lift a finger, her blue eyes fixed intently on the woman’s malicious face. Over her shoulder she could see the face of the scornful woman who claimed to be Camille de Vere. “Hush, Finette; you forestall my triumph!” cried that derisive voice. Her hazel eyes blazed. “Listen, you nameless foundling!” she went on, sharply, her very voice a sword. “I am Camille de Vere, Norman de Vere’s legal wife. I was never dead, as he believed. It was a plot to deceive him that I might punish him for all I suffered at his hands. Well, I am avenged! You, girl, have never been his wife for an hour, and that child there--ha! ha! ha!--is illegitimate!” Those words--those bitter, taunting words--seemed to sting Thea into new life. She sprung unsteadily to her feet, and leaning over the crib, flung one arm protectingly about her son, and lifted her face, deathly white, but all alive and quivering with the blue fire of her eyes, to the face of her foe. “You speak falsely!” she cried, with passionate indignation. “You are an impostor, and I command you to leave the house at once!” Camilla laughed in cool derision. “It is you who will have to go. I have come to stay,” she said. “Finette, go prepare my old rooms for me, while I talk to this creature who has usurped my place almost two years. When I have finished explaining matters to her, I think she will be glad to take her illegitimate child in her arms and go and hide their shame in the river.” CHAPTER LVII. Finette Du Val did not take kindly to the command of her mistress that she should leave the room. She had counted on the rare treat to her malicious mind of seeing Norman de Vere’s two wives pitted against each other in deadly warfare. So when Camille bid her go and prepare her rooms, she stood silently and pretended not to hear. Camille waited a moment, then turned on her furiously and repeated the command, adding, stormily: “How dare you pretend not to hear? Go this instant!” Finette frowned, but she went--went outside the door at least, and leaving it just the least bit ajar, knelt down and peeped through the crevice she had thus made. Then Camille turned back to the girl she hated, crying, with blazing eyes: “Perhaps you think my husband married you for love, girl?” Thea had sunk helplessly into a low chair beside the baby. She did not know whether the woman before her was Norman’s first wife or not, and she did not know how to get rid of her, but she hoped that the nurse would come in at any minute and then she could send for her mother-in-law. She determined not to bandy words with the angry creature.