"Could you be happy with me, Vane, if we had really to live in a cottage and work hard for each other?" she asks, earnestly.
"Yes, Reine, I am quite sure I could," he answers, as earnestly.
"Then may I do as I like with this paper?" she inquires.
"You must not defraud yourself, dear," he says, startled.
She laughs—her old, ringing, joyous laugh, with a new tone of tenderness in its musical cadence.
"I do not intend to," she answers. "You are everything to me, Vane; Maud may have all the rest."
With the words, the white paper flutters in her whiter fingers, there is a sound of tearing paper, and the old millionaire's will flutters in a heap of snowy fragments on the soft, green grass.
Then Reine laughs in pretty, childish exultation.
"You are the heiress still, Maud," she says, gayly. "I have only Vane. From first to last, he is all I have cared for or wanted."