"You said you wanted these rooms for Miss Hayes. Very well, you can have them. I dare say Maud will give me another room."
"Oh, dear no, I would not turn you out of your room for the world, child!" suavely. She knew that Eliot would not permit it. "I only thought that if you had given them up and gone to Eliot's these would suit Ida. She always had them when she came before, and it does seem foolish, does it not, for man and wife to occupy six rooms when three would be enough? I hoped you and Eliot had become reconciled to your forced marriage ere this."
Driven to bay, Una cried out, angrily:
"Mrs. Van Zandt, you are talking the wildest nonsense. There was no forced marriage."
"Then why did Eliot write such a letter to my husband? Come to my room, I will show it to you since you dispute my word."
She caught Una's cold hand and half dragged her with her to her own room, where behind locked doors she gave the ignorant wife that fatal letter to read—fatal, because in Eliot's haste and worry he had stated only the bare facts of the case, and Una could not read between the lines the love that had filled his heart.
She read it—the lovely, trusting girl—every word. She comprehended it in part. What she could not fathom Sylvie pointed out in clearest language, and when she had made her cruel meaning clear as day, she said, maliciously:
"Noblesse oblige!"
A gasp, and the girl's heavy eyes turned dumbly on her face—dumb with a bitter, humble humiliation. Sylvie said, half deprecatingly:
"He did not love you at first, of course. How could he? When he came he asked me to give you a separate suite. I remonstrated, but he insisted. Of course I thought you would win him while I was away, and he would get over his foolishness."