"I have nowhere to go," she says, looking at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.
"It matters not to me," he answers, cruelly. "Go back to the fine, gay lover that lured you from your duty and your plighted word. See if he will take you, now that you have lost all chances of the Langton fortune."
Reine comes bravely forward to the side of the discarded girl.
"Oh! uncle, let her stay," she says, imploringly; "I do not want your fortune, I have Vane. That is enough for me. Let Maud come home and have the money—or at least share it."
"No," he thunders, stormily; "I have said my say—I will abide by it. She is nothing to me henceforth. Let her go."
Maud looks around at the bride.
"It is all your fault," she says, bitterly. "If you had not married Vane before I came, my uncle would have forgiven me. Vane does not love you, he has only taken you for my uncle's money. Beware that you do not rue this night in dust and ashes."
"If I had only known that you would come back, Maud, like this," Reine begins, wringing her hands in a passionate kind of self-pity.
Maud crosses to the door before them all, with that proud, imperial step that had become Mr. Langton's heiress so well, but is mockingly out of place now. The bride follows her.