"Is it?" she asked, with a slow, strange smile.
"Yes. Take the advice of a sensible man who wishes to see you do well. Yours is a false position, a cruel position; but make the best of it—take the thousand per annum, and enjoy your life."
He never forgot the scorn those wonderful eyes flashed at him.
"No," she said, "I thank you; I believe when you give me that advice you mean well, but I cannot follow it. If I were dying of hunger I would not touch even a crumb of bread that came from Lady Lanswell. I will never even return to the house which has been my own. I will take no one single thing belonging to them. I will leave them my hatred and my curse. And you tell Countess Lucia, from me, that my hatred shall find her out, and my vengeance avenge me."
She rose from her chair and took the letter she had brought with her.
"I will never part with this," she said; "I will keep it near me always, and the reading of it may stimulate me when my energy tires. I have no message for Lord Chandos; to you I say farewell."
"She is going to kill herself," he thought; "and then, if it gets into the papers, my lady will wax wroth."
She seemed to divine his thoughts, for she smiled, and the smile was more sad than tears.
"I shall not harm myself," she said: "death is sweeter than life, but life holds 'vengeance.' Good-bye."