Mrs. Farnum winced.
"Ah! but you forget—"
"I forget nothing; do you suppose that I could?" cried Virgie, sharply, "but I might at least have been spared this last indignity—to offer me a paltry hundred pounds when he has a fortune in his hands belonging to me."
"A fortune! I did not suppose—I did not know that you had any money," stammered Mrs. Farnum, looking blank.
"My father left me a good many thousands of dollars when he died; it was all settled upon me at the time of my marriage, but Sir William Heath took charge of it and has it now. He deposited five thousand dollars in a bank here for my use, while he should be away, and the most of that remains; but there is much more that rightly belongs to me," Virgie explained.
"Then this hundred pounds surely is your due," Mrs. Farnum said, as she drew it from the envelope and held it out to the young wife.
Virgie drew back haughtily.
"Do you suppose that I would accept as charity a paltry sum like that?—for Lady Linton sent it as such, and as a sort of remuneration for what I suffer. It is an outrage which I cannot brook, and I am amazed at the audacity that prompted it."
So was Mrs. Farnum amazed, and she saw at once that Lady Linton had unwittingly committed a great blunder. She had never dreamed that Virgie had had money at the time of her marriage, and she imagined that Lady Linton was also ignorant that her brother had taken back to England a fortune belonging to the girl whom they were thus seeking to wrong.
Matters were getting complicated, and she almost wished that she had never allowed herself to become involved in them.