"I, upon my word, I beg your pardon. It was entirely--I give you my word of honor--unintentional; a mere omission. I was so flurried, you see, and somehow I forgot. Can you forgive me?" he stammers. "With pleasure," she returns, coolly, looking away from his shamed countenance. "But we have digressed from our subject. We were talking of Maud and the note you hold. How can you withhold it from her when you know that her very life hangs upon it?" "Reine, do you know that I hate that woman?" he cries, with subdued fierceness. "Then you never loved her," she replied, decisively. "I did; but her falsity turned my love to hate," he answers, moodily. "No," she answers. "'That is not love That alters where it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.'" An utter silence which she breaks again, anxiously: "You will not refuse my prayer? Give me the note and let me go to Maud." He turns from her sullenly and looks out of the window at the blue, sun-gilded waves breaking in snowy foam against the shell-strewn shore. "You could not let her suffer for a crime of which she is innocent," the pleading voice goes on. "I suffered innocently," he says, shortly enough, without turning around. "Why did she make me a mark for the finger of scorn?" "You can live _that_ down," she answers. "But she, her very life is at stake. Do not forget that if she suffers the full penalty of the law, for this crime of which she is not guilty, her blood will be on your hands. You will, in the sight of God, and to my knowledge, be Maud's Langton's murderer." Though he will not turn around, she sees the strong shudder that shakes his frame. "You will be a haunted man," she goes on, relentlessly. "By day and by night you will dream of the girl you have slain. You will remember always that the golden head you hoped to pillow on your breast is laid low in a dishonored grave." "For God's sake, Reine, why do you torment me so?" he cries, turning fiercely round upon her. "For Maud's sake, and your own sake, and for humanity's sake, and my own sake," she retorts, bravely. "That Maud's innocence may be vindicated, that you may be saved from the evil consequences of your wicked revenge, that the world may see how divine a thing is repentance and forgiveness, and that I," her brave voice falls to a low, pathetic cadence, "that I may not have to die of shame because I have given my heart to one so lost to honor, truth and mercy." Vane Charteris stands like one stunned a moment. "What a little vixen it is," he says to himself, darkly. "There is no end to her tongue." "I know what you are saying to yourself," the girl breaks in, vivaciously; "you are wishing I would go away and leave you alone----"