"Happy! oh, I dare say," Maud laughs, hysterically. "No doubt you, Mr. Charteris, will be exceedingly happy in a squalid cottage, with a sharp-tongued little vixen for your companion. Permit me to remind you of the o'er-true adage that 'When poverty comes in the door, love flies out of the window.'"
Something in the blue fire of the eyes he bends upon her makes her quail momentarily. He answers with chill brevity:
"Fortunately I may take my wife to a palace, not a cottage, so we need run no such risks as you apprehend, Miss Langton. To convince you, will you look at this?"
He draws a folded paper from his breast and holds it open before her startled eyes.
"You see," he says, icily, "it is the will with which Mr. Langton threatened you the night you jilted me. I am a lawyer, you remember. I drew this up for him at his own request. It is signed by competent and available witnesses. It is perfectly legal, and I can prove it so in any court in the land. It bequeathes Mr. Langton's whole fortune equally between my wife and myself, cutting you off without a shilling."
Maud stares at the terrible legal-looking document with frightened eyes and a corpse-like pallor.
"You—you are deceiving me," she says, faintly. "If it is really true, why have you kept the will so long and allowed me to usurp the property?"
"Through pity and kindness for you," he answers, with cold contempt. "As long as Reine was supposed dead, no one suffered from the fraud but myself, and I was content to be poor that you might have the wealth your soul coveted. But now my wife's claims must be considered above all others."
"I would sooner die than be poor!" Maud weeps, wildly.
And Reine, taking the legal document between her white fingers, turns her shining eyes on her husband.