"You were heartless, Maud," Reine says, with a flash of her superb, dark eyes. "So Mr. Clyde said," carelessly. "Anyway, I told him I should come back. He was very angry. He drove Nell back, and swore I should stay and go with him to the preacher that was even then waiting to marry us. I would not yield an inch, and as soon as I could I got away." "Why do you tell me all this, Maud?" Reine says, with something like royal scorn. "You make me think very little of you." "You will perhaps think very little of yourself presently," beautiful Maud answers, maliciously. "Come here, Nellie, and tell Mrs. Charteris all the hard things her husband said about her when Mr. Langton almost went down on his knees to him to marry her." "How can she know?" Reine says, puzzled. "I was hid in a closet, listening, if you'll please to excuse me, ma'am," the maid says, timorously, to the new mistress of Langton Villa. Then she looks at Maud. "Oh, I'd rather not," she exclaims. "It would only hurt Mrs. Charteris' feelings." "Do as I bid you," Maud answers, with her imperious tone of command. "When Mr. Langton asked Vane Charteris to marry Reine, what words did he use in reply?" Nellie looks at the bride with scared eyes. "Mrs. Charteris, you mustn't get mad at me. I wouldn't tell it, no, not to save my life, only that Miss Maud will be angry if I don't," she says, deprecatingly. No words come from Reine's pale lips. She stares with great, troubled dark eyes alternately at the beautiful, cruel mistress and the shrinking little maid. "Tell her," Maud repeats, imperiously. "Well, then, he said," the maid begins, nervously, "he said, Mrs. Charteris, a flat no that he wouldn't marry you, that he couldn't love a vixen and a hoiden like you, an' he'd sooner die than have you hanged like a mill-stone around his neck." "Why, then, did he consent to marry me?" the bride gasps, after a shiver and moan of unspeakable humiliation. "For your own sake, ma'am, 'cause Mr. Langton said he'd make you his heiress if the gentleman would marry you, and if he wouldn't, why he would leave his money to some asylum for fools. An' so Mr. Vane he said he would marry you, 'cause he wouldn't want you to lose the fortune on his account." "On one condition," Maud says, in her clear, high-pitched voice, gazing with pitiless eyes at the beautiful, scarlet face before her. But Reine lifts her small hand with a sudden imperious gesture of command. "I will not hear another word," she says, in a tone of mingled sorrow and pride. "You must obey me now, Nellie; I am your mistress, not Maud. And I command you never to open your lips on this subject again." Nellie shrinks abashed. Her whilom mistress laughs low and mockingly. "You have heard enough, eh? Well, I don't blame you. Well, Nellie, the note?"