CHAPTER X.

"Now, Reine, I know the hotel where Vane stays when he comes to New York. If he received my telegram he will be waiting there for me. I will go and bring him to you."

They are in a small, private parlor of a hotel in New York. Reine, very dusty and anxious-looking, is walking up and down the floor, never having even removed her hat.

"I will bring him to you," Mr. Langton repeats. "Now, dear, go to your room and bathe your face and hands, and brush your hair. Do not let your husband find you so dusty and travel-stained."

"As if he cared," she says, with infinite mournfulness, yet obeying his hint all the same.

She looks with dim, pathetic eyes at the pale, grave face in the mirror.

"How these few days have changed me," she sighs. "No wonder! Yet I did not know it was in my nature to suffer such pain. If Vane cared for me he must be startled at the change. But he does not love me, and never will, alas!"

She waits, perhaps the longest half an hour she ever knew in her gay, careless life. Mr. Langton comes at last--alone!

"Whew! how confoundedly hot and dusty is New York at this season," he splutters, mopping his face with his handkerchief. "The thermometer up in the nineties, and the dust in clouds that choke and blind one. An hour of life at Langton Villa is worth a year in this noisy, abominable place. Reine, let us go home."

She stares at him with wide, dismayed dark eyes.

"Uncle, he--he is gone?" she falters.

"Gone, yes, the impertinent young puppy," he growls. "Gone without a word, utterly ignored me and my telegram. I wish to Heaven----" he pauses with a dark frown.

"What, Uncle Langton?" with pathetic wistfulness.

"That--that I'd never married you to him, the scamp!" he blurts out in a fury. "He has treated us both with the most distinct contempt. We will go home, dearie, and Vane Charteris may go to the devil!"

This from the irate old man, but Reine looks at him bravely.

"Uncle Langton, I object to your calling names," she says, distinctly. "Mr. Charteris is my husband. I insist that you shall respect that fact."

"A pretty husband," he mutters.

"No one shall blame him in my hearing," she goes on with shy, pretty dignity. "After all, it was unfair to hang an unloved wife like a millstone around his neck."

"You know all," Mr. Langton mutters, darkly, "but where the deuce you found out is beyond my ken. If I knew, I'd shoot the fellow that told you. Well, are you ready to go back to the mountains to-morrow?

"No, oh, no," she clasps her small hands in anguish. "Oh, uncle, you promised to leave me your fortune. Give me only just enough money to follow Vane across the ocean, and I'll resign all the rest!"

"What, you obstinate little vixen! You are quite determined to follow him?"

"I _must_, uncle. Oh, you do not know how much depends on my seeing him!"

"And you would cross the great 'herring-pond' alone? I should think you would be frightened at the thought, you, a green little country girl. Who knows where Vane may cast his lines? Perhaps among the frog-eating Frenchmen, or the garlicky Italians. Can you speak French?"

"Like a native," she responds, with an arch little _moue_.

"Italian?"

"Perfectly, and Spanish, too. You know I get my living by my learning," she laughs, trying hard to be her own bright, careless self.

He is plainly delighted.

"Very well, you shall go," he replies. "A steamer sails to-morrow. We will go in her."

"_You_," she cries, with incredulous joy. "It will be too wearisome for you. You are so old."

"Not a bit," contemptuously. "Do you think I will let you go alone?"