CHAPTER XIII.

Vane Charteris, entering the cool, breezy white room, with its wide windows opening upon the sea, encounters the half-indignant gaze of his old friend, who is lying on a low couch in a silken dressing-gown and tasseled cap, his wrinkled old hands grasping the knob of his gold-headed cane, which he proceeds to thump viciously on the floor at the young man's entrance, thereby expressing the war-like state of his mind.

"I hope I see you well, Mr. Langton," airily observes the handsome young "reprobate," as Mr. Langton mentally dubs him.

"Then you'll be disappointed," snaps the old millionaire, irefully. "Never was so mortally used up before in my life. Soul and body will scarcely hold together. And all on your account, you disobedient young rascal."

"Disobedient?" Mr. Charteris queries, in a mild tone, slightly arching his eyebrows.

"Disobedient, yes;" with an emphatic thump of the cane. "Didn't you receive my telegram ordering you to remain in New York until I came?"

"Ye-es, I did," admits the culprit, with no great show of repentance, "but being, according to the old law, free, white, and twenty-one, I didn't seem to see that I was under any man's orders."

"Nor any woman's either?" testily.

"Nor any woman's either," Vane repeats, undauntedly.

"At least I expected a show of courtesy from a young fellow whom I had tried hard to benefit," Mr. Langton retorts, with his stiffest air.

Whereat Mr. Charteris, after a little ambiguous cough, puts on a show of meekness.

"Ah, there I see my naughtiness," he says. "I acted like a churl. There can be no two opinions as to _that_. But, sir, if you could only know the madness of the passion that drove me on, I think you might find some excuse for me in your heart."

Mr. Langton, differing from him on this latter point, says nothing in reply, but discreetly changes the conversation.

"You talked with Reine?" he inquires.

"Oh, yes; or, I may say, she talked with me," this ruefully.

Mr. Langton at this chuckled heartlessly.

"She has a sharp tongue of her own, I warrant you," he says.

"Inherited honestly enough," replies Mr. Charteris, with a pointed bow at the old gentleman.

"Yes--yes; chip of the old block," Mr. Langton retorts, in nowise disconcerted at the hint of his niece's resemblance to himself. "Well, Vane, this mission on which she has followed you abroad--has she broached it?"

His yet keen eyes detect the flush that steals up to the young man's temples as he replies in the affirmative.

"I hope it was concluded to her satisfaction."

"It has not been decided yet," Vane replies, with no little embarrassment.

"I may not venture to inquire into its nature?" Mr. Langton asks, curiously.

"No, I think not--at least, not just yet. Later on you shall hear, perhaps," Vane responds, ambiguously, and with very palpable confusion.

They have some desultory conversation, then Mr. Langton asks, casually:

"Well, and have you enjoyed your '_outing_?'"

"Recklessly," responds he.

"I don't think I quite enter into your meaning," the old millionaire retorts; and Vane, laughing carelessly, replies:

"I mean I have enjoyed it down to the ground, as the fellows say here."

"Humph! looks as if you had been dissipating straight through," Mr. Langton comments, glaring keenly at him under his shaggy brows. "You don't ask me anything about that wretched girl," he says, startlingly.

"Reine has told me," Vane replies, pale to the lips.

"Serves her right. I can't, for my life, feel sorry for the treacherous little cat! To think that she should have treated me so!" said the vindictive old man.

"This affair is likely to go hard with her," says Vane, with admirably-acted indifference.

"Pooh! nothing of the sort," Mr. Langton returns, trying to salve his uneasy conscience. "No danger of such a pretty girl as Maud coming to grief. That cold, white beauty that reminds you," maliciously, "of a lily, would win over any jury in the world."

They discussed the subject a little while, carelessly, almost unfeelingly, it would seem, since Maud Langton has been so much to them both a little while ago; then the old millionaire turns carelessly, to all intent, to another subject.

"Do you know it seemed to me superlatively ridiculous to be dragging my old, sapless bones so far as this, dancing attendance on another man's wife?"

Vane colors, then turns aside the implied reproach.

"It must have weighed upon you, certainly," he responds. "I am rather surprised at such thoughtlessness, even on the part of Reine. Why did you let her persuade you?"

"Nothing of the kind. I simply came in spite of her. Did you think I would have suffered your wife to come alone, Vane?"

"Will you smoke?" Mr. Charteris inquires, proffering a choice Havana, and lighting one himself.

Mr. Langton, taking one gingerly between his fingers, resumes:

"There is a good deal more to Reine than we thought for. I am downright pleased over the exchange of heiresses I made. I wish now, seeing how all fell out, that I had taken her without encumbrance."

"Meaning me?" Vane asks, with an uncomfortable flush.

"Meaning _you_," Mr. Langton replies, beginning to puff away furiously at his Havana, as if he were a smoke-stack. "You see I am mistaken in you, Vane. After all you said I didn't believe it was in you to treat your bride in such a cavalier style. If I had thought you would really run away from Reine the next day, and set all the country talking and sneering, you might have gone to the devil before I'd have given you my pretty little niece!"

"The regret is mutual, sir," Vane replies, with some heat; and then, glancing up, warned by some strange instinct, he sees his unloved wife standing just within the door.

She has entered just in time to catch Mr. Langton's closing speech and the angry answer.

Vane sprang to his feet, very red and confused.

"I--I beg your pardon," he says, in the utmost confusion.

She bows, speechlessly. Her face has gone quite white; her eyes shun his in a kind of fearful shame. She says at last, in a strange voice, but with desperate calmness:

"I feared Uncle Langton would be rude to you. You must pardon him, and pardon me."

"For what?" he gains courage to ask, a little blankly.

"For our share in making you unhappy," she answers, very low.

Something in the proud humility of her attitude strikes a remorseful pang through his heart.

She stands alone in the center of the room, slender and graceful as a young palm tree, her head drooped slightly forward, the dew of unfallen tears shining like pearls in her long, dark lashes. She is like, yet unlike, the giddy Reine of a month ago.

"There is nothing to pardon," he says, in a flurried tone, "Mr. Langton was right. I have acted very badly--like a brute, in fact. You must wish you had never seen me."

"Yes," she says, low, but steadily. "It would have been so much better for you."

"I did not mean that," says he, disconcerted.

"You are good enough to say so," she replies, with delicate disbelief, and then she goes up to her uncle.

"The physician you sent for is here," she says. "Shall I send him in?"

"Are you so bad as that?" Vane asks, with a slight start.

"Yes; I can scarce hold myself together," Mr. Langton replies, and his trembling old hands attest the truth of his words. "I must have something for my nerves or I shall not be able to stir from this to-morrow."

Vane rises, glad to get away under any terms.

"_Au revoir_," he says. "I will call again to-morrow."

He goes back to the Haven of Rest with the poets, ├Žsthetes and such people, lounging on the balconies. That name is a misnomer. It appears to him a haven of unrest. He wanders away to the shell-strewn beach, and smokes like a chimney while he reviews the situation.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the physician attending Mr. Langton has thrown a bomb-shell into that camp.

"You are quite broken down and exhausted," is his dictum. "Rest and recuperation are what you need. I will leave you a tonic, and in about ten days you may be well enough to be taken for a short drive, and in two days more you may be strong enough to walk down to the sea-shore, and----"

"Distraction, man!" thunders the irascible invalid. "Do you think I have come to this place to stay a year? No, sir. I am going to start back to America to-morrow."

"But, my friend, you know that is quite impossible," laughs the stout, good-natured physician. "At your time of life, recuperation goes on but slowly, and----"

"I tell you I'm as young as I ever was," this from Mr. Langton, in tones of mulish obstinacy.

"And I tell you you're breaking down of old age, and you'll not stir from this for two weeks; if you do you'll risk your life. You understand me, young lady?" turning to Reine.

"Yes, sir, and your directions shall be implicitly carried out."

"But, Reine," he objects when the doctor has gone, "you know you said it would be impossible we should stay beyond to-morrow."

"We must manage some way--you must not be hurt by our haste. We will go as soon as we can, that is all," she answers, patting his cheek, then turning gently from him to the window.

The dark, blue waves go splashing softly past under the gaze of her dark, sad eyes. A thought comes into her mind:

"But most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love. The honey of poison flowers, and all the measureless ill."