"I was hid in a closet, listening, if you'll please to excuse me, ma'am," the maid says, timorously, to the new mistress of Langton Villa. Then she looks at Maud. "Oh, I'd rather not," she exclaims. "It would only hurt Mrs. Charteris' feelings."
"Do as I bid you," Maud answers, with her imperious tone of command. "When Mr. Langton asked Vane Charteris to marry Reine, what words did he use in reply?"
Nellie looks at the bride with scared eyes.
"Mrs. Charteris, you mustn't get mad at me. I wouldn't tell it, no, not to save my life, only that Miss Maud will be angry if I don't," she says, deprecatingly.
No words come from Reine's pale lips. She stares with great, troubled dark eyes alternately at the beautiful, cruel mistress and the shrinking little maid.
"Tell her," Maud repeats, imperiously.
"Well, then, he said," the maid begins, nervously, "he said, Mrs. Charteris, a flat no that he wouldn't marry you, that he couldn't love a vixen and a hoiden like you, an' he'd sooner die than have you hanged like a mill-stone around his neck."
"Why, then, did he consent to marry me?" the bride gasps, after a shiver and moan of unspeakable humiliation.
"For your own sake, ma'am, 'cause Mr. Langton said he'd make you his heiress if the gentleman would marry you, and if he wouldn't, why he would leave his money to some asylum for fools. An' so Mr. Vane he said he would marry you, 'cause he wouldn't want you to lose the fortune on his account."
"On one condition," Maud says, in her clear, high-pitched voice, gazing with pitiless eyes at the beautiful, scarlet face before her.