There is a moment's stunned silence, then the ice around Maud's selfish, worldly heart melts in the sunshine of this warm and loving nature. She is conquered by this heavenly forgiveness and love.
"Reine, Reine," she cries, in hoarse, half-choking accents, "forgive me for my cruel and wicked denial of you. I know you now. No other woman but Reine Charteris could be so forgiving, so generous, so self-sacrificing."
"You have beggared yourself," Vane says to his wife, a little vexed.
"I have you," she answers, with a glance so radiant and loving that he cannot but forgive her folly.
So there is peace between the three—a peace that is never more broken, for Maud's heart has gone out to her cousin in a love never to be recalled. She even offers to divide the fortune so generously bestowed on her, but Vane and Reine decline the compromise. They have each other, and as each laughingly declares, "that is the world and all." They try "love in a cottage" for a year, and declare it a perfect success.
One of the world's great bards has written: "The secret of genius is dogged persistence." Vane Charteris, toiling early and late in his dusty office for his little wife, finds it true. The laurels he would never have won in ease and indolence, begin to circle his brow with a chaplet that is the pride of his young wife's heart.
Yet he goes home one evening with a sigh instead of a smile for the dark-eyed wife who meets him in the homely little parlor, made beautiful only by her beautiful presence.
"Reine, how lovely you are," he murmurs, bending to kiss the upturned lips. "Ah!" with a discontented sigh, "if I only had jewels and laces, satins and velvets to adorn that glorious beauty."
"What is it, dear?" she asks, trying to smooth the frown from his brow with her dainty forefinger.
"It is only this, dear: Invitations are pouring in upon us which we cannot accept because we are too poor to enter into that circle where we rightfully belong by reason of my talent and your beauty. Darling, how I hate to seclude you from the gaze of men because I am too poor to adorn you like the rest. What shall we do?"