CHAPTER XV.

A sociable breakfast for three being laid in Mr. Langton's room, the small party proceed to enjoy it, Vane and Reine with appetites sharpened by the early morning air, and the sharp sea-breeze.

The old millionaire regards the young people curiously beneath his shaggy brows. Something in their expressions makes him say, confidently:

"You have come to an understanding regarding that secret mission, you two, I see."

"Yes," Reine answers, giving him a radiant glance from under her drooping, black-fringed lashes.

"And you are ready to return to America?"

"As soon as you are strong enough," Reine makes answer, trying not to let him see her inward anxiety to be gone.

"It is too bad that this old hulk of mine should be the means of detaining you," he grumbles. "What shall you do now?"

She lifts her dark, inquiring eyes to the face of Mr. Charteris. He nods, affirmatively.

"I will tell you, uncle," she replies. "I shall write to Maud's counsel, and tell him I have found the missing note, and that I shall soon return, bringing it with me. He must obtain a stay of proceedings until my return."

"And this was your mission abroad?" Mr. Langton queries, surprised.

She smiles and nods, and Mr. Charteris comes in for his share of the old man's scrutiny.

"Then _you_ had the note, Vane!" he says.

"Yes, sir," he responds, rather shame-facedly.

Mr. Langton looks from one to the other of the expressive faces, and comes to a very fair comprehension of the truth.

After a moment passed in silent thought, he breaks out with irrepressible enthusiasm:

"Reine, you are a trump!" whereat both the young people laugh with contagious merriment.

"Where are you staying, Vane?" Mr. Langton queries.

"At the Haven of Rest. I wished to change my quarters to the Sea View Hotel, but this imperious little lady here forbids me," he replies.

The keen little old eyes turn curiously on the crimsoning face of the girl.

"Why should you do that?" he asks, and stammering some incoherent excuse Reine flies from the room.

Then Vane rather ruefully explains the reason. To tell the truth he begins to feel ashamed of himself, the more so that Mr. Langton applauds Reine's determination.

"I am proud of her," he declared. "I was vexed at first. I thought she meant to follow you and plead her own case. Now I cannot help but glory in her nobility and her reasonable pride. She has the head of a Solomon on her young shoulders. If you were not blind, Vane, you could not fail to see what an adorable girl you have married."

"She is different from what I thought, certainly," Vane admits, gravely.

"She can hold her own--I am glad of that," Mr. Langton grunts, amicably. "You see you could not have her for the asking. Serves you right. There is hardly any excuse for the way you acted."

"It was outrageous, certainly," Vane answers, with admirable penitence, "but I wish she would have made it up and let me come here. The Haven of Rest is a dry place certainly--given up to invalids and poky people."

"I hear that Sea View is rather gay," Mr. Langton replies. "Some new people arrived this morning. There is talk of a ball to-night."

"A ball! Will Reine go down?" Mr. Charteris inquires.

"Scarcely, I think. You see I shall not be able to escort her."

"Perhaps she will allow me that honor," Mr. Charteris observes, promptly.

"Perhaps so," Mr. Langton responds, with a dry smile.

The ball comes off. Vane constitutes himself the attendant cavalier of Reine. In a white lace dress with Marechal Neil roses on her breast and in her hair, she has never looked more brilliant and beautiful. There is a softened grace about her, a new light in her eyes that is wondrously winning. She is withal a perfect dancer, embodying the very poetry of motion.

Some very pretty girls are present, some very nice men, but Reine is the belle of the ball. Mr. Charteris looks on in surprise. Reine had not been appreciated at Langton Villa.

"You have not given me a single dance," he says to her late in the evening.

"You have not asked me," she replies, in just the slightest tone of reproach, "and now I cannot; my card is full."

She floats away with a partner who has just claimed her. Vane, leaning carelessly against a chair in the corner, watches her languidly. She seems to enjoy herself. Smiles hover on the crimson lips, the dark eyes flash beneath their curling lashes.

Suddenly someone comes up to him--an acquaintance he has formed in London, and who has, somehow, found his way to this secluded spot.

"Ah, Charteris, how-de-do," the new-comer says, unceremoniously. "Who is the dark-eyed beauty? I've been watching her this half hour."

"Which one, Sir George?" with affected nonchalance.

"By Jove! there is but one, you know, the divinity in white lace and yellow roses. I saw you speaking to her just now," returns Sir George Wilde, with a look of interest in his handsome brown eyes.

"_That!_" says Mr. Charteris, "oh, that is--Miss Langton," with a curious hesitation over the name.

"Friend of yours?" inquires the dashing young baronet.

"Slight acquaintance," Charteris answers, warily.

"A compatriot, I take it," pursues Sir George.

Vane nods affirmatively.

"You'll introduce me, then?"

"With her permission," Vane responds, a trifle stiffly.

"_That_, of course," laughs Sir George.

A little later Vane goes to her to proffer his request. She stands for the moment alone in the embrasure of a window, her dark eyes turned from the giddy dancers out upon the mystic, lonely sea, with the moon and stars asleep upon its breast. He tells her, watching the bright face narrowly, that an English baronet has been so attracted by her beauty that he desires an introduction. Will she accord it?

The laughing, dark eyes, a spice of mischief in their starry depths, glance up into his own.

"A baronet!" she says, making a little round O of her rosy mouth. "Do you think, Mr. Charteris, I could really bear the burden of such an honor without being crushed by it?"

"You can but try," he retorts, lightly. "England expects every man and every woman to do their duty."

"Then I am ready for the sacrifice," she laughs, as lightly.

He looks at her a moment in thoughtful silence.

"Well?" she asks, interpreting a question in his look.

"It is this, then, Reine: I am placed in an awkward position. How shall I introduce you--as Miss Langton, or as--as Mrs. Charteris?"

He flushes uncomfortably as the words leave his lips. His bride's face reflects the crimson glow. After a minute she replies, with outward indifference:

"Better, perhaps, as--Miss Langton, according to our agreement this morning."

Some slight feeling of pique rises in his heart. He will not own to himself that when he condescended to ask her the question he had thought to give her pleasure, and had felt, too, that he should not be ashamed to see this peerlessly-lovely girl wearing his name.

"Perhaps she does not really care for me as she pretended," he thinks to himself, and the first spark of jealousy is lighted in his heart when he sees her long lashes fall before Sir George's admiring gaze, and sees with what calm and graceful self-possession she acknowledges the introduction to the handsome, titled nobleman. "Who would have thought, when she first came to Langton Villa, that the wild little 'school ma'am' had so much dignity?" he thinks. "Is it, after all, a new phase of her character, or was I simply blinded then by my admiration for Maud? It seems that Sir George is irresistibly attracted by her graces. What can he see in the girl that I was blind to?"

And full of this wonder, he sets himself to watch the young baronet, who hovers around Reine with the palpable desire of the "moth for the star."

The whole room sees his admiration, and smiles at the fair American's conquest.

Vane is a good deal amused, and unknowingly piqued.

"What barefaced admiration," he says, within himself. "The young dandy is falling in love with my wife, confound him!"