"The fair-faced little devil!" she muttered, clenching her hands tightly together. "Oh! that I dared to murder her as I did that other one who came between me and him!" She paced up and down, wild with contending passions. "I was wrong to leave them together," she thought, in bitter anger with herself. "He was glad, perhaps, that I came away and left them to an uninterrupted _tete-a-tete_. I over-reached myself that time; but, ah! Ada Lawrence, woe be unto you if you win him from me!" The postman's impatient rattling at the door-bell interrupted her angry mood. In a moment a maid rapped at the door, delivered a letter to her and went away. Mrs. Vance had no correspondents usually. She guessed, with a sharp quiver of anger and fear, whence it came, and held it at arm's length a moment as if it had been a noxious reptile. "The greedy old harpy," she muttered indignantly, tearing it open at last. "Must she bleed me again so soon?" She tore the coarse, yellow envelope into a hundred little bits, then angrily scanned the note in her hand. It was very brief, but amounted to an imperative summons from Haidee Leveret to come to the old house to-morrow and bring all the money she could raise. CHAPTER XXIV. Old Peter Leveret and Haidee, his wife, after much bickering and mutual recriminations, attended by more or less pummelling and hair pulling, had at last made an amicable adjustment of their difficulty regarding Mrs. Vance's secret. Old Haidee, termagant and spit-fire though she was, found herself no match for the eternal reproaches and brutal usage of her thoroughly enraged husband, and eventually confessed herself the weaker vessel by yielding to the pressure of a stronger conjugal power and revealing the secret of her influence over Mrs. Vance, at the same time dividing her ill-gotten spoils with the incensed old ruffian. It is needless to say that old Peter's greedy soul was not content with these ill-gotten gains. He felt that the beautiful widow had not paid, so far, a tithe of what was due to himself and Haidee as the fortunate possessors of so fatal a secret. "I tell you, Haidee," said he, "the woman has got to come down heavily with the money, or I shall sell her secret to somebody who will pay a better price for it--perhaps to Mr. Lawrence or that young Darling."