She looked at him quite calmly, her courage was rising, now that the first deadly shock had passed away. "Perhaps," she said, "you will tell me what you want. Spare me any further conversation with you; it does not interest me. Tell me, briefly as you can, what you want." "What do I want?" he repeated. "Yes, just that--neither more nor less--what do you want? I own you have me in your power, I own that you hold a secret of mine. What is to be its price? I cannot buy your silence with money. You are a gentleman, a man of honor, having my fair name in your power--what shall you charge me for keeping it? I am anxious to know the price men exact for such secrets as those. You wooed me and won me, after your own honorable fashion--what are you going to exact now as the price of your love and my mad folly? I was vain, foolish, untruthful, but, after all, I was an innocent girl when you knew me first. What shall be the price of my innocence? Oh, noble descendant of noble men--oh, noble heritor of a noble race. Speak--let me hear!" Her taunts stung him almost to fury; his face grew livid with rage; yet, the more insolent she, the more deeply he loved her; the more scornful she, the deeper and wilder grew his worship of her. "I will tell you the price," he said; "I will make you my wife. Consent to marry me, and I will swear to you, by heaven itself, that I will keep your secret faithfully, loyally, until I die." "I _cannot_ marry you," she replied; "I do not love you. I cannot help it, if you are angry. I do not even like you. I should be most wretched and miserable with you, for I loathe you. I will never be your wife." "All those," he replied, slowly, "are objections that you must try to overcome." "What if I tell you I love some one else?" she said. "I should pity him, really pity him, from the depths of my heart; but, all the same, I should say _you must be my wife_!" She longed to tell him that she loved and meant to marry Earle, but she was afraid even to mention his name. "I shall conquer all your objections in time," he said. "It is nothing to me that you say you dislike me; it is even less that you say you like another." But he never even thought that she really liked Earle. Had she not run away from him? CHAPTER LXXI. THE COWARD'S THREAT. "That is the first part of your declaration," said Lady Doris, with the calm of infinite contempt; "if I will promise to be your wife, you will promise to marry me. What if I refuse?" "You are placing a very painful alternative before me," he replied. "Never mind the pain, my lord; we will waive that. I wish to know the alternative." "If you will marry me I will keep your secret, Lady Doris Studleigh, faithfully, until death." "Then I clearly, distinctly, and firmly refuse to marry you. What then?"