are all so pious,’ he added, with a sneer. Then pausing a moment, as if to rally his forces for a last blow, he said, slowly and distinctly: “Brunell and Madame Verwest know you are my wife, but I have told them you are crazy, and that rather than send you to a lunatic asylum, I shall keep you in close confinement here for a while, unless you become furious, in which case there are plenty of places for you, not so good as this, or as much to your taste. To the other servants I make no explanations, except that you are crazy, and that it is a fancy of yours that you are not. This fancy they will humor to a certain extent, but you cannot bribe them. They will give you every possible attention. Celine will wait upon you as if you were a queen. You can dine in state every day, with twenty courses, if you like, and wear a new dress each time. You can drive in the grounds when it suits you, and drive alone there; but when you go outside the gates, Madame Verwest, or Celine, or some trusty person will accompany you, as it is not _safe_ for a _lunatic_ to go by herself into strange quarters. At intervals, as it suits my convenience or pleasure, I shall visit you as my wife, and shall be the most devoted of husbands in the presence of the servants, who will thus give me their sympathy and wholly discredit anything you may tell them. So beat your pretty wings as you may, and break your heart as often as you like, you cannot help yourself. I am supreme here. I am your master, and Madame Verwest says of me sometimes that I am a madman—ha, ha!” “It was the laugh of a demon, and the look of the man was the look of a madman as he pushed from him the quivering form which had thrown itself upon the floor at his feet supplicating for pity, for pardon. He had neither, and with a coarse laugh which echoed through the salon like the knell of death to all poor Anna’s happiness, he left the room and she heard his heavy footsteps as he went swiftly down the stone stairway and out into the court. “Was it a dream, a nightmare, or a horrible reality, she asked herself as she tried to recall the dreadful things he had said to her and to understand their import. ‘A prisoner, a maniac,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, mother, oh, Mary, that I should come to this. Oh, if I could die, if I could die;’ and in her anguish she looked about her for some means of ending her wretched life. Her New England training, however, was too strong for that. She dared not deliberately and suddenly die by her own hand, but if this thing were true, if she were a prisoner here with no means of escape, she would starve herself to death. They could not compel her to eat, and she would never taste food again until she knew that she was free.