"Rats!" he cried brutally. "That sort of thing won’t do for me, my dear wife, I can tell you! I see you are as big a baby as ever--you need some one badly to teach you your way about! No, no! I want you at once--who and what’s to prevent me from taking possession of my lawful property? There is only one thing for us to do: to bolt together--and to leave them completely in the dark as to your fate. I hear that those two old prigs who wouldn’t give bite or sup to your father when he was a dying man are dead nuts on you. We must make ’em suffer, my darling! We must madden them till they are ready to do anything and everything if they can only find you alive. And we must talk it over--so that your disappearance may be a regular thunderbolt! Can you come to my lodgings to-morrow evening? I want you to myself--it’s natural, isn’t it? This road, quiet as it is, is hardly the place for husband and wife to meet, is it? What? You can’t come?" His voice hoarsened--he clutched her arm so fiercely that she gave a faint cry. "You don’t want me?" he exclaimed, in tones which to her strained ears seemed those of deadly menace. "If you don’t--I know you, you see! I have not forgotten your kisses, if you have mine--it means another man! And if it does, I will have no mercy on you, do you understand? None!" "How dare you?" Once more she faced him, this time in an access of desperation. "How dare you accuse me of crime? My coldness, my absolute refusal to listen to any man is so well known that it has been common talk in society! More than once I have felt that uncle has suspected me--and, indeed, he has sounded me----" In her earnestness she was off guard, and drawing her to him, he suddenly threw his arms about her neck and kissed her lips--a long, violent, almost savage kiss. "There--go home and think of that!" he said, with a triumphant chuckle, as she staggered away and almost fell against the fence. "And take this address. I shall be here every evening at the same hour. And if you don’t come--well, you had better come, that’s all! I am not in a very patient humour." She made her way out of the Park at his side, dazed, trembling. When at last he consented to leave her, and hailing a hansom, she clambered in, she leant back, and for a few minutes was barely conscious. She came to herself with a sob. "Will God have mercy on me?" she wailed. "I was so--so--very young!" CHAPTER VI