“Mrs. St. Alban, _my wife_,” he said, simply, but every ear in the room except Nina’s was struck by the tender pride that breathed in those two words “_my wife_.” Nina arose and they bowed to each other. Sibyl St. Alban drew her breath hard when she took her first look at her rival. There was a proud, fearless scorn and deep reproach in the dark eyes that met her own in one swift, quickly withdrawn glance. Then dinner was announced, and every one breathed freer, as for a few moments, as Virgie Mason whispered to her partner at table, there had seemed to be suppressed thunder and lightning in the air. CHAPTER X. “I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER.” “Mrs. Strangemore, I think yours is the most romantic marriage I ever heard of. You were the merest child, weren’t you?” said Virgie Mason, curiously. The gentlemen were lingering over their cigars, and the ladies had gone back to the parlor. Virgie, a pretty and very voluble young lady, started the after-dinner conversation with the above remark. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Miss Drusilla snapped to herself. “Now, what under heaven does that chatterbox want to discuss Nina’s marriage for? And before that hateful St. Alban’s woman, too!” She hoped that Nina would, as _she_ mentally phased it, “shut her up;” but the girl only answered, in a dreamy sort of way: “Yes, I was only a child--barely thirteen years old.” Sibyl St. Alban flashed her a look of hate under her drooping lids. Only eighteen, while she was twenty-six. “Were you very much impressed with the importance of your position--married, although but a child in years?” continued inquisitive Virgie, while her bosom friend, Miss Starr, tried to telegraph her a warning glance, but failed utterly, because Virgie’s grey eyes were fixed admiringly on Nina’s agitated face, as she answered, slowly: “I was very much impressed by the dying words of Talbot’s mother addressed to me. I have never forgotten one single word.” “They were solemn words, perhaps,” the girl said, with irrepressible curiosity. “Yes,” her hostess answered. “Would you like to hear them? These were the words she said:” She looked straight into Sibyl St. Alban’s face as she repeated: “‘Talbot is your husband now, my darling. You will belong to him always, and he to you. Promise me now that you will give him all your love and all your life, that you will always try to secure his happiness.’” The blue-eyed beauty flashed her a furtive look of defiance, but her heart sank with fear. It seemed to her that Nina had already penetrated her secret, and that she was appealing to the dead against her. “How sweet! how romantic!” said Miss Starr’s gentle voice. “You promised her, I know,” said Virgie, with that confidence with which one young, noble heart reads another.