“Miladi, I beg ten thousand pardons! It was a mistake. I thought to serve you, but I erred. I will go to-night. But, sir”—turning to her master—“Mrs. de Vere had nothing to do with that—I swear it. Punish me, but not her; she is innocent.”
He turned to Camille, and saw tears standing thick in her lovely eyes.
“You wronged me,” she said, sadly, reproachfully. He stood undecided, doubting, and she went on, in the same sad voice: “I am innocent, Norman. To prove it, I bid you bring the child back here to Verelands, and no mother could be kinder to her child than I will be to your pretty little protégée. I was mad with jealousy that night, and scarce knew what I said. Whatever wild words I uttered, I take them all back and crave your pardon.”
Her sweet humility, her tender yielding, did what all her defiance had failed in—they melted the ice about his heart. One moment he gazed in silence, then, springing to her side, clasped her closely to his breast, exclaiming, gladly:
“Forgive me, darling, for my unjust suspicions! I will atone for them by deeper devotion than in the past.”
CHAPTER XI.
Norman de Vere did not dream of the depths of duplicity hidden in his wife’s nature. He believed that she was honest in the repentance she professed, and accordingly he had Little Sweetheart brought back the next day to the home from which she had been so rudely torn by the wily French maid, whom Mrs. de Vere had now sent into brief exile to carry out the plot by which she had saved her guilty mistress.
A great change had been wrought in the pretty child by her week with the wretched, heartless old rag-picker. Beaten and starved, her pretty clothes taken from her and replaced with filthy rags, she was a pitiable object when she returned to Verelands, and the big blue eyes staring out of the wan little face were bright with fever. She was given a warm bath, clothed in new and pretty garments, and laid in a little bed beside that of Norman’s mother. There she lay for weary weeks, consumed by scarlet fever. Norman’s wife fled in terror to a fashionable hotel, leaving her mother-in-law to nurse the little invalid, quite ignoring all the protestations she had made so recently.
“I have never had the fever; I should die if I contracted it!” she cried, wildly; and although Norman tried to explain to her that grown people rarely contracted the disease, she paid no attention.
“I am going; you must come with me,” she said, imperiously.