"It has not been decided yet," Vane replies, with no little embarrassment. "I may not venture to inquire into its nature?" Mr. Langton asks, curiously. "No, I think not--at least, not just yet. Later on you shall hear, perhaps," Vane responds, ambiguously, and with very palpable confusion. They have some desultory conversation, then Mr. Langton asks, casually: "Well, and have you enjoyed your '_outing_?'" "Recklessly," responds he. "I don't think I quite enter into your meaning," the old millionaire retorts; and Vane, laughing carelessly, replies: "I mean I have enjoyed it down to the ground, as the fellows say here." "Humph! looks as if you had been dissipating straight through," Mr. Langton comments, glaring keenly at him under his shaggy brows. "You don't ask me anything about that wretched girl," he says, startlingly. "Reine has told me," Vane replies, pale to the lips. "Serves her right. I can't, for my life, feel sorry for the treacherous little cat! To think that she should have treated me so!" said the vindictive old man. "This affair is likely to go hard with her," says Vane, with admirably-acted indifference. "Pooh! nothing of the sort," Mr. Langton returns, trying to salve his uneasy conscience. "No danger of such a pretty girl as Maud coming to grief. That cold, white beauty that reminds you," maliciously, "of a lily, would win over any jury in the world." They discussed the subject a little while, carelessly, almost unfeelingly, it would seem, since Maud Langton has been so much to them both a little while ago; then the old millionaire turns carelessly, to all intent, to another subject. "Do you know it seemed to me superlatively ridiculous to be dragging my old, sapless bones so far as this, dancing attendance on another man's wife?" Vane colors, then turns aside the implied reproach. "It must have weighed upon you, certainly," he responds. "I am rather surprised at such thoughtlessness, even on the part of Reine. Why did you let her persuade you?" "Nothing of the kind. I simply came in spite of her. Did you think I would have suffered your wife to come alone, Vane?" "Will you smoke?" Mr. Charteris inquires, proffering a choice Havana, and lighting one himself. Mr. Langton, taking one gingerly between his fingers, resumes: "There is a good deal more to Reine than we thought for. I am downright pleased over the exchange of heiresses I made. I wish now, seeing how all fell out, that I had taken her without encumbrance." "Meaning me?" Vane asks, with an uncomfortable flush.