“You understand me. I know all your malicious gossip to the negro house-maid last night.” “So Nance has been telling lies on me, madame? I thought you trusted your faithful Finette better than to listen to those miserable negroes, my lady,” reproachfully. “Go on with my hair,” Mrs. de Vere answered, shutting her red lips with an angry click. She spoke no more until the last hairpin was pushed into the wavy coil of shining hair. “Well, did you succeed?” she inquired, in a low, significant voice. “Yes, madame. The leetle one is far away--far away and safe. Monsieur will nevaire find her again.” “That is well. You shall have your reward,” Mrs. de Vere said, coldly. She waited until Finette, with a rather sulky face, had finished dressing her in an exquisite morning-dress of soft white mull and lace, with a quantity of fluttering pale-green ribbons; then she unlocked a drawer in her dressing-case, and took out a purse from which she counted out two hundred dollars into the eager hands of the avaricious maid. “You are paid now for what you did last night; and remember you are to hold your tongue about that forever,” she said. Finette protested that the secret should never pass her lips. All this time Mrs. de Vere had been trembling with suppressed anger, which now she could hold in no longer. She turned angrily toward Finette, and cried: “Now I am going to pay you a month’s wages in advance and discharge you!” “Discharge me, madame? Oh!” cried Finette, in amazement. “Yes--for your odious tattling last night. You ridiculed me--held me up to the derision of my own servants--and I shall punish you by discharging you without a character!” Mrs. de Vere retorted, violently. “And all for the lies of that black hussy, Nance! Oh, madame! I nevaire could have believed this, after all my years of faithful service. But I shall punish the false negress--I will pull the black wool from her head!” stormed Finette, in a towering rage, and in a mixture of French and English impossible to transcribe. “Be silent! How dare you behave so rudely in my presence?” cried Mrs. de Vere, with a stamp of her slippered foot, her hazel eyes flashing indignantly. “But such lies! How can I bear it? Not a word of truth in it! That Nance envies me--lies to get me out of my place and turned away homeless. But I will tear her eyes out!” hissed Finette, viciously. Mrs. de Vere smiled scornfully at the theatrical gestures of the excited French woman. “You can spare yourself all these denunciations of the poor house-maid,” she said, impatiently. “It was not she who betrayed you; it was my husband, who was sitting in the rose arbor and overheard you and Nance.” Finette stared--then leered. “In the rose arbor! Ah, but that is strange!” she cried. “Why, it was just outside the rose arbor I met Nance. The hussy! she told me she had just come from a party. She led me on to talk about you, and all the time laughing in her sleeve, knowing he was there!”