"Has she really repented? Does she indeed care for me now, as her words would imply, or is she the most consummate actress upon earth?" he asks himself.
And this is the beginning of the end.
Maud, left alone in the silent, stately library, throws off the mask of meekness and patience that had set so becomingly on her beautiful face.
She walks up and down the floor impatiently, with blended triumph and vexation in her soft, blue eyes.
"I have gained one point at least," she murmured to herself. "And I will gain the rest, I swear it," clenching her jeweled hands tightly. "I love him. How strange that I should grow to care for him when once I fled from him in the hour that would have made me his own. I was mad and blind. I was deluded by my romantic fancy for Clyde. Ugh! how the remembrance of that man's face troubles and haunts me. I see it always as I did that night, upturned in the moonbeams, dead and white. If I had loved him really, the shock must have killed me. But I did not love him—at least not half so well as I love Vane Charteris now. How proud and independent he is. But I love him all the better for that. If he had not come back and brought me that paper I might have been hung, or at least imprisoned for life. I hate to think that I owe it to Reine Langton, whom I never liked. How fortunate for me that she and Uncle Langton died. I have the fortune now, and I am determined that I will yet be the adored wife of Vane Charteris."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
"Is the English mail in yet, Mrs. Odell? I do so want my English letter!"
Mrs. Odell turns a compassionate look on the pale, wistful face of the girl, into whose white cheeks all the life-giving breezes of Mentone have failed to restore the vanished rose.