id, with spirit.
"I cannot understand how they dared to send it to me in any such way;
indeed, I cannot understand a good many things that have come to me
through you. If Sir William Heath has wilfully done me this irreparable
injury he might at least have been man enough to strike the blow himself,
rather than employ women to be his emissaries."

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.

"You should have kept your marriage certificate," she faltered, "every
wife should do that--then you could have proved your claim."

"I shall prove it yet," Virgie declared, in a clear, decisive voice. "Do
you imagine I am going to sit tamely down and allow a stigma to rest upon
this innocent child if there is any power on earth to prevent it? In spite
of all that you have told me, or all that your friends have written, I
<i>know</i> that I am Sir William Heath's lawful wife.