e here! A twenty-pound note to take ye back to Geneva! When
ye sign this receipt for the stipend, ye are free to leave my house at
once. There's some letters and a couple of telegrams for ye! Bring me
the maid, now, and I'll pay her in the same way; and, moreover, I will
give her ten pounds to take her home. Then, ye'll both remember ye
are not to sleep another night here! I'll give ye the whole day to say
good-bye and to make up yere boxes. There will be two four-wheelers here
after yere dinner, and ye'll find the Royal Victoria Hotel suited to ye
both, at St. Heliers. If ye choose to go, the morning boat takes ye to
Granville. Bring the maid here now! Do you linger, woman? I'll be obeyed
and forthwith!"

With flashing eyes, Justine Delande sprang up, facing the flinty-hearted
old Scotsman. "I will never abandon Nadine here! She will die in your
cheerless prison!" she cried. But the old pedant glowered pitilessly at
the startled woman, who cried: "To turn me away like a dog--after these
many years!" And her sobs woke the echoes of the vaulted room.

"Hearken, my leddy!" barked old Fraser, "One more word, and I'll have
the gardener put ye off the premises! The girl ye speak of is young and
strong. She'll have just what the Court gives her, and what her father
laid out for her, and I'll work my will, and I'll do his will. Ye're
speaking to no fule, here now! Take yere money and yere letters, and
bring me the maid, or I'll bundle ye both in a jiffey into the Queen's
highway. I'll have none but my own servants here--now!"

Then Justine Delande, without another word, stepped forward, and,
seizing the pen, signed her receipt for wages due, in silence. She
defiantly gathered up her withheld letters and papers. She returned in
a few moments with the maid, whose ox-like eyes glowed in the sudden joy
of a return to Switzerland. For the ranz des vaches was now ringing in
the stout peasant girl's ears. "There, that's all, now!" rasped the old
man, when the maid had gathered up her dole. "The butler will go down to
town with ye and see ye safe, and he will leave word at the bank to pay
yere checks. I keep no siller here. It's a lonely house." And the dead
tyrant worked his will through the living one, as his stony heart had
laid out the future.

Justine Delande faced the old miser pedant as she indignantly cried:
"God protect and keep the poor orphan who has drifted out of one hell on
earth into another! Your dead brother robbed