Serena drew back as she came near, as though she feared infection from the girl's presence.
"How do you do, Serena?" said Beatrix, quietly. "I did not expect to see you; this is quite a surprise. I thought that you had returned to your home in the North long ago."
This is Serena's hour of triumph; for the sake of this moment of supreme satisfaction, she would have given a year of her life. She drew herself up proudly, and the pale eyes shone like glass.
"I shall never return North to live!" her shrill, high-pitched tones made answer; "my home is in New Orleans now. Have you not heard? Do you never see the newspapers? I am married. I am Mrs. Bernard Dane!"
In an instant Beatrix's mind had grasped the situation. She saw at once that this was Serena's game of vengeance.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
SERENA'S FAILURE.
As Serena's announcement was made, and the words fell upon the silence with a clear note of triumph pealing through her voice, Beatrix fell back faint and stunned. She realized the truth at once; she saw Serena's game, and knew that she had won. She saw that Serena—stung by the fact that Keith Kenyon's love would never be hers, and that he had allowed himself to be led into an engagement which he had not desired, and of which he soon grew weary, and so had repudiated her—all this had made Serena a very devil. And then added to it was the fact of her own poverty. And here, right within her grasp, was the chance to retrieve herself, to gain a grand home and a fortune, and at the same time ruin Keith Kenyon forever. For the young man had been reared to believe himself to be Bernard Dane's prospective heir; and, of course, with such a rearing he was utterly unfitted for any position in life where he could earn his own bread. Surely the future looming up before him was pitiful to contemplate.