On the morning of that day when Leslie Noble has his interview with Lady Vera, Mrs. Cleveland is sitting alone with Ivy in a small, daintily-furnished morning-room that opens from the library. They are anxiously discussing their situation and prospects, for it is impossible to conceal from themselves that Mr. Noble is dazzled by the prospect opening before him, and that the severance of the tie that has bound him to the shrewish Ivy is more agreeable to his mind than otherwise. "Will he desert me, do you think, mamma? He used to love me, you remember," exclaims the fair termagant, trying to whisper comfort to her foreboding heart. Mrs. Cleveland laughs, a low, bitter, sarcastic laugh. "You do well to say _once_," she answers, "for whatever love he might have had for you in the past, you have killed it long ago by your foolish extravagance, your violent temper and self-will." "Who incited me to it all, I wonder?" her daughter cries, turning her head angrily. "Who was it that told me to have my own way and defy him, since being my husband, he was perforce compelled to bear with me? Who but _you_, who now turn around and taunt me with the result of your teachings?" "Well, well, and I was right enough." Mrs. Cleveland replies, coolly, justifying herself. "Of course I could not foresee how things would fall out, or I should have counselled you to keep your husband's love at all events. He might then have made some fight against this Countess Vera's claim. As it is----" She pauses with a hateful, significant "hem." "As it is," Ivy repeats after her, shortly. "Well, go on. Let us have the benefit of your opinion." "He will be glad of any excuse to shake you off," finishes her mother. "But he shall not do it," Ivy cries out, furiously, and brandishing her small fist as if at some imaginary foe. "I will stick to him like a burr. I am his wife. The woman that claims him is a hateful impostor. No one will make me believe that Vera Campbell's bones are not lying in the grave where we saw her buried three years ago." "Perhaps this will convince you," exclaims a loud, triumphant voice, and Leslie Noble, striding suddenly into the room, holds an open paper before her eyes. It is the cablegram from Washington, telling him that the coffin beneath the marble monument is empty--that the bride he buried three years ago has escaped from her darksome prison house of clay. "Do you believe now?" Leslie Noble demands, with something of insolent triumph in his voice and bearing as the two women crowd nearer and scan the fatal cablegram with dilated eyes and working faces. Mrs. Cleveland answers, stormily: