“You understand me. I know all your malicious gossip to the negro house-maid last night.”
“So Nance has been telling lies on me, madame? I thought you trusted your faithful Finette better than to listen to those miserable negroes, my lady,” reproachfully.
“Go on with my hair,” Mrs. de Vere answered, shutting her red lips with an angry click. She spoke no more until the last hairpin was pushed into the wavy coil of shining hair.
“Well, did you succeed?” she inquired, in a low, significant voice.
“Yes, madame. The leetle one is far away—far away and safe. Monsieur will nevaire find her again.”
“That is well. You shall have your reward,” Mrs. de Vere said, coldly. She waited until Finette, with a rather sulky face, had finished dressing her in an exquisite morning-dress of soft white mull and lace, with a quantity of fluttering pale-green ribbons; then she unlocked a drawer in her dressing-case, and took out a purse from which she counted out two hundred dollars into the eager hands of the avaricious maid.
“You are paid now for what you did last night; and remember you are to hold your tongue about that forever,” she said.
Finette protested that the secret should never pass her lips.
All this time Mrs. de Vere had been trembling with suppressed anger, which now she could hold in no longer. She turned angrily toward Finette, and cried:
“Now I am going to pay you a month’s wages in advance and discharge you!”