"The only woman who could make me happy rests in her ocean grave," Vane answers, with deep solemnity and truth. Miss Langton regards him in wonder. "Yet once you scorned her," she says slowly. "How did she win you at last, Vane?" He is silent a moment, as if the question has struck home to his own heart, awakening thought and memory to life. His lips grow strangely tender in their saddened curve. "How can I tell?" he says slowly. "Perhaps it was the softened sweetness that hung about her after that night when our lives became one. Perhaps it was her proud, sweet patience under my unkindness. Perhaps, yes, after all! I believe it was the charm of her love that won me. Can you realize such a thing as this, Maud, that love should win love?" "Yes," she answers, hopefully. "Did I not tell you just now that my love would win you and make you happy?" He shakes his head impatiently "That could never be, Maud. You and I are better apart. I can never forget Reine, my slighted girl-bride. She is ever in my thoughts. I think of her as of one living, not dead. I recall her rose-leaf lips, her dark, laughing eyes, the nameless charm that clung about her, and my very heart aches with the intensity of its yearning to find my loved and lost one again." "Thank God!" exclaimed a low, rapturous, thrilling voice almost at his very side. CHAPTER XXVIII. At that heart-thrilling cry of rapture, Vane Charteris and his companion turn around simultaneously. Within a few feet of them they behold Reine, the long-lost bride, Reine, in the long, trailing sables of widowhood, yet with a face fairly transfigured by happiness, love and triumph. The effect of her sudden appearance upon Maud is most startling. The beautiful blonde, after one terrified glance at her strangely-restored cousin, shrieks out: "A ghost, a ghost!" and flies in the wildest dismay toward the house. Vane Charteris, half-bewildered, yet full of gladness, flies to clasp the beautiful phantom to his heart. As his arms close around the palpitating figure, and he realizes that she is truly a creature of flesh and blood, a cry of thanksgiving escapes his lips, the tears of not unmanly emotion burst from the eyes and rain down on the dark head, nestled closely and lovingly against his breast. He holds her close and tight, raining passionate kisses on the sweet, scarlet mouth, the blushing cheeks, the dark eye, tearful with this sudden happiness. "You love me, Vane," she murmurs, softly and half-incredulously, "and yet I thought, I feared----" "You feared what?" he asks, breaking in upon her shy pause. "That you loved Maud best," she answers. "When I came up the path and saw you two together, I crept behind the tree and listened. If I had learned then that she was the desire of your heart, I should have crept away quietly to die of my sorrow, I should not have come between you and your love. You never should have known."