"None."
"I need not ask if you have taken Una's advice and procured a divorce?" Carmontelle said, with quiet comprehension of the other's pale, grave face that flushed slightly, as he answered:
"I am bound to Una while I live, although I have given up all hope of ever seeing her again."
Carmontelle's steady eyes went over the worn sheet of paper on which Una had traced her pathetic farewell to her husband.
"And Miss Hayes, whom she says here you loved before your marriage?" he said, abruptly.
"I can not tell how she fell into such an error. Miss Hayes is my brother's sister-in-law. She visited here often, but we were never more than friends," Eliot answered, quietly, all unsuspicious of Sylvie's treachery.
Then the ladies of the house came in, and the conversation drifted to other subjects.
Sylvie was the same exquisitely dressed doll; but five years had changed Maud and Edith from pretty, vivacious girls to quiet, dignified young ladies. In Maud there was a greater change than in Edith, and the secret lay in the failure of her beloved novel.
Three years ago the cherished book had been given to the world, and the cruel critics had ridiculed the immature work of the girl, saying that the wild flights of fancy, so fresh, so buoyant, could have emanated from none but a young, inexperienced brain knowing nothing of the hard, cruel world.
Pretty, tender Maud did not have the spirit of a Byron to retort on her critics and write, despite their sneers, so she laid down her pen, as she said, forever, and nearly broke her heart in bitter humiliation over her cruel failure. So there lay the secret of the beauty so ethereally frail that one fancied, in looking at her, that the spirit would soon plume its wings for another world.