"What if he does love her?" she thought, scornfully, "He cannot marry her. He is a beggar. I have stripped him of everything. She will leave him for lack of gold, as he left me. Then he may feel something of what I suffered through his sin!"
And she felt gladder than ever before at the thought of Howard Templeton's poverty. She knew that he could not marry the girl for whom he said he would have lost his own life—that beautiful, mysterious Laura.
Mrs. Egerton was passing and she called her.
"I am going home," she said. "I have danced too much. I am tired, and the rooms are suffocating."
"A multiplicity of excuses," laughed Lord Dudley. "Ossa upon Pelion piled. Mrs. St. John, you will not be so cruel?"
"I must; my head aches," she replied; and though he pleaded and Mrs. Egerton protested, she was obstinate.
Mrs. Egerton saw her depart, feeling sorely vexed with her.
Howard Templeton saw her leaving, and crossed the room to her.
"I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow," he said, quietly, as he lightly touched her hand.