CHAPTER XVII.

"I have a proposition to make to you," Vane says, after he has conversed with Mr. Langton awhile on indifferent subjects.

Mr. Langton, lying on his couch, looking dull and weary, glances up with some interest.

"Well?" he says, abruptly.

"I saw your physician to-day," Vane observes, slightly embarrassed. "He thinks it would be at the risk of your health if you left this place under a month."

"The rascal! He's keeping me here to swell his fee for attendance, that's all," groans the millionaire; "well, and what has that to do with your proposition, eh?"

"A great deal. You know your delay in returning to America is attended with serious risk to Maud Langton, languishing in prison, and waiting for a release that cannot come until she regains possession of that note that is to prove her innocence."

"I have urged Reine to return alone, but she is unwilling to leave me," Mr. Langton answers, hastily.

"There would be no risk in doing so," Vane replies, "with a competent nurse left in charge of you. It is of that I wished to speak to you. Persuade Reine to go back without you. I will myself accompany her."

"_You!_" Mr. Langton exclaims, in such thorough surprise, that Vane flushes a deep red.

"Yes," he answers, a little testily, "I will go with her. Why not? She is my wife."

"Certainly, and it will be a very good plan," Mr. Langton replies, secretly delighted at Vane's repentance, but pretending to be very calm and non-committal.

"You see," Vane continues, with a sigh of relief, "after the business that took us home was concluded, I should bring Reine back. By that time you would be well and strong again, and we would travel some, the three of us, and remain abroad some time. Do you like my plan?"

"Very much. I am pleased with the idea. Have you spoken with Reine on the subject?"

"No, not yet. To tell the truth I have relied on you to persuade her. I might fail, you know. Will you undertake to plead my case for me?" inquires Vane, blushing like a girl.

"I thought you were lawyer enough to plead your own case," laughs the old millionaire.

"You see, this is different," answers Vane. "I--I do not quite understand Reine. I do not know how she would receive such a proposal. Perhaps she would laugh at me. I should have to plead as a lover, not as a lawyer. Only imagine the spirited little lady laughing in my face."

"I do not believe it is likely," Mr. Langton replies. "But since you are so afraid of your wife, I will speak to her about the matter. But, pray tell me, is your anxiety solely over Maud, or are you reconciled to your strange marriage?"

A step at the door, a hand at the latch, and Reine comes in, interrupting the answer hovering on his lips. Vane rises abruptly.

"I will go down and smoke my segar on the balcony," he says, then, looking at his wife: "Reine, will you walk on the sand with me afterward? It will be moonlight, and the nights are very pleasant."

A smile of surprise and pleasure lights the changeful face into splendor.

"Thank you, I shall like it very much," she answers, with some inward wonder at his kindness.

"I will wait for you, then, on the balcony," he replies, and when he's gone, Mr. Langton hastens to tell her of Vane's proposal.

Her color comes and goes, her bosom heaves as she listens.

"But you know I could not leave you here alone with only a hired nurse," she remonstrates.

"You could, and you must," he replies, seriously.

"Listen, Reine, your husband has held out the olive-branch of peace, and you must not decline to accept it if you care for him. I shall do very well here with the doctor and the nurse. After all, I am not sick, only weak and fatigued. Remember Maud's peril before you refuse."

"I have written to Maud's lawyer. He will know that I have the note, and they will wait until I come," she replies.

"Delays are dangerous," he answers, "and the mails are not sure. Suppose your letter should not reach them. Letters have been lost before now," he says, artfully.

The girlish face grows white and troubled.

"If I thought that mine would be lost----" she begins.

"You would go," he finishes for her. "Very well, Reine, take my advice and go. I will remain here until you return. Go down now to your husband and tell him you will be ready to accompany him to-morrow."

"If anything should happen to you, I should never forgive myself," she says, with lingering hesitation.

"Nothing _will_ happen," he answered. "You will find me here, when you come back, safe and well. Go, now, to Vane, and tell him you will go."

She lingers a moment, warned by some strange presentiment of evil; then, conquered by his renewed persuasions, and her own anxiety over Maud's fate, she goes from the room with a strangely beating heart to seek her husband.

He throws away his segar with a smile at sight of her, and comes out from a little knot of men who have clustered around him.

"You are ready?" he says, with a new tone of tenderness in his voice that makes the girlish heart beat all the faster, and drawing her hand through his arm they bend their steps to the shore.

It is twilight, that most seductive hour of all the twenty-four. The moon is rising softly, a few stars shine in the purple vault above, and mirror themselves in the laughing waves below.

The murmurous sound of the great deep is all that breaks the silence.

"Mr. Langton has told you, Reine," he says, looking down into the brilliant face that is "luminous, star-like, gem-like," in the soft, twilight haze.

"Yes," she answers, in a low voice, as if she scarcely cared to break the charmed silence brooding around them.

They walk slowly arm-in-arm along the sandy shore. Vane has drawn her hand very closely through his arm, and the tips of her velvet-soft fingers lie against his wrist, sending thrills of sweetness along every nerve. To him also "silence seemed best," so they stroll on quietly awhile. Reine lost to everything but the magic charm that lies in the presence of the man she loves, and Vane held in thrall also by some new feeling, whose power he is scarcely prepared to acknowledge.

He looks down at the young face that is strangely fair and tender in the mystic light, and wonders at his own blindness that he has never quite realized the charm of her beauty before. She has thrown some soft trifle of filmy lace over her waving dark hair, with soft ends knotted beneath the round, dimpled chin. Nothing could be more becoming. It frames the glowing face so delicately and so exquisitely, making her fairer than she knows. A strange, delicious thrill goes through Vane's heart as he remembers that this girl belongs to him--she is his wife.

"And she loves me," he says to himself, with the same wonder he had felt when that truth first flashed upon him. It flatters his manly vanity, cruelly hurt by Maud's treachery, to know that one true heart clings to him and loves him, though the woman he had loved had deceived him.

Suddenly her lips part with an anxious question:

"And you think it wise and prudent that I should go back to Maud leaving Uncle Langton here?"

"Yes," he answers, and there is a silence which she does not break.

"What do you think of the plan?" he asks.

"I hardly know," the girl answers, with some embarrassment.

"But you will do as I wish you--you will go back--in my care, Reine?"

"If you think it for the best," she answers very low.

"I do think so, otherwise I should not urge it. You need not be afraid to go with me, Reine. I will care for you with every tenderness--you are my wife, you know."

And, stooping over her, he lays his lips full and softly upon her own.

The shock of a great, new happiness tingles through the girl's sensitive frame. It is the first caress her unloving husband has ever offered her. With that impulsive kiss hope, which has almost died in her wounded heart, is born anew.

"You are my wife," he repeats, gently. "I shall not lose sight of that fact again. I shall remember my duty better."

She sighs a little. That word "duty" sounds so cold.

"I will try to make you happier," he continues; "I fear you have not been so light-hearted as you used to be since _that_ night. Do you know those verses you were reading this evening sounded like a reproach to me?"

She glances up, inquiringly.

"The verses you shut your hands over when I came up to you," he explains. "The sad words ring in my head:

"'And we say: "They are wrecked at dawning. The hopes of our lives, alas!"'

"Did you think, my child, that they applied to your own case?"

"I was tempted to think so--can you blame me?" she says, with a gentle reproach in her voice.

"Do not fall into such despondent thoughts again," he answers, evasively. "You are too young for sorrow, Reine. Look on the bright side of the picture. I foresee that this play will end with my falling desperately in love with my own wife."

"I hope so," she answers, with sudden, piteous earnestness, and a quiver of passionate sorrow in her voice.

"So do I," he says, filled with sudden penitence. "I am sure it cannot be hard to learn to love so fair and noble a wife. You have saved me from my own sinful passions, Reine. I can never forget that."

"And now I must go back," she says, with a bitter sigh of regret. "Uncle Langton will be lonely, and if--if I go to-morrow I have a great deal of packing to do first."

They walk slowly back to the hotel through the murmurous silence of the summer night by the sea, with the strong, sweet smell of the brine in their faces. It is the first time they have been together without cold words from one or the other, the first time her husband has caressed her.

And when he leaves her at the balcony steps he presses his lips to her white hand, and whispers, kindly:

"After to-night, little wife, we are never to be parted any more, remember."