"Reine has told me," Vane replies, pale to the lips.
"Serves her right. I can't, for my life, feel sorry for the treacherous little cat! To think that she should have treated me so!" said the vindictive old man.
"This affair is likely to go hard with her," says Vane, with admirably-acted indifference.
"Pooh! nothing of the sort," Mr. Langton returns, trying to salve his uneasy conscience. "No danger of such a pretty girl as Maud coming to grief. That cold, white beauty that reminds you," maliciously, "of a lily, would win over any jury in the world."
They discussed the subject a little while, carelessly, almost unfeelingly, it would seem, since Maud Langton has been so much to them both a little while ago; then the old millionaire turns carelessly, to all intent, to another subject.
"Do you know it seemed to me superlatively ridiculous to be dragging my old, sapless bones so far as this, dancing attendance on another man's wife?"
Vane colors, then turns aside the implied reproach.
"It must have weighed upon you, certainly," he responds. "I am rather surprised at such thoughtlessness, even on the part of Reine. Why did you let her persuade you?"
"Nothing of the kind. I simply came in spite of her. Did you think I would have suffered your wife to come alone, Vane?"
"Will you smoke?" Mr. Charteris inquires, proffering a choice Havana, and lighting one himself.