Lifting her golden head with a proud air that belied the terrible sinking at her heart, she said, defiantly:
“Madame, you have forced yourself into Verelands without an invitation, and you persist in remaining against my command that you go. Therefore you can not expect to be treated with the courtesy due to a welcome guest. I decline, therefore, to reply to any questions you may impertinently ask, and from this moment ignore your undesired presence.”
“Ma foi! but that was queenly,” muttered the eavesdropper at the door, forced into unwilling recognition of the young wife’s dignity.
Camille drew her breath hard. She realized, too, that Thea had the advantage of her; but after a moment she gave vent to a forced laugh.
“Oh, very well; sit there dumb, if you choose,” she said, airily. “Your silence will in nowise alter the unpleasant facts I am here to tell you.”
Thea did not answer—did not deign to look at her. She sat silent and pale, her blue eyes resting on Alan’s lovely, sleeping face, one slender hand—the one that wore the wedding-ring—wandering softly through the golden rings of baby’s hair. She was saying to herself over and over that it was all a lie—the woman was an impostor, bent most probably on blackmail. She had read of such things in sensational newspapers.
Camille resumed, angrily:
“As I was saying, you imagine that my husband married you for love. You never made a worse mistake in your life. He gave you the shelter of his name to save you from disgrace, because that old scandal of long ago had cropped up and was in everybody’s mouth. If he had not married you when he did, and so given the lie to that report, the people who had been kind enough to notice you at first would have given you the cold shoulder very soon, because it had come to be believed that you were Norman de Vere’s illegitimate child.”
She saw Thea start as if she had stabbed her to the heart; but the pale, tightly shut lips did not open to utter a word. The girl was proud enough, if need be, to die of her inward wound in silence.
Camille laughed mockingly as she saw what a wound she had given her foe, and resumed: