"After these long years," he pursues, speaking under the spur of some deep, overmastering agitation, "I have come back to curse you, traitorous, false-hearted woman, and to make atonement." "Atonement!" she falters, with a start of fear. "Yes, Marcia Cleveland, atonement," he bursts out passionately. "Tell me, where is the dear, true angel-wife whom I was led to believe false and unfaithful to me, through your heartless machinations. At last I know the truth, at last I know you, devil that you are! You maligned the truest, purest, gentlest woman that ever lived! Your own sister, too--the beautiful, innocent child that was left to your charge by her dying parents. God only knows what motive you had for your terrible sin." She glares at him with fiery eyes from which the momentary fear has fled, leaving them filled with the mocking light of a wicked triumph. "_You_ should have known my motive, Lawrence Campbell," she bursts out, passionately. "When I first met you in society, the plain, untitled English gentleman, I was a young, beautiful, wealthy widow, and by your attentions and visits you led me to believe that you loved me. "Then Edith came home from her boarding-school, and with her baby-face and silly school-girl shyness won you from me. You married her, and the very torments of the lost were mine, for I loved with a passion of which she, poor, weak-natured creature, could never dream. Did you think I could tamely bear the slight that was put upon me? No, no, I swore revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, and I have had it; ha, ha! a costly cup, full to the brim and running over!" She pauses with a wild and maniacal laugh. The man stares at her with starting eyes and a death-white face. The enormity of the wrong that has been done him seems to strike him dumb. "I have had a glorious revenge," she goes on, wildly, seeing that he cannot speak; "you fell an easy prey to my plan of vengeance through your foolish and ridiculous jealousy. Through the efficient help of a poor, weak fool who loved me I made you believe Edith false and vile, and taunted you into deserting her! Have you suffered? Ah, God, so did I! I was on fire with jealousy and hate. Every pang I made you and Edith suffer was like balm to my heart. I parted you, I came between your wedded hearts, and made your life and hers a hell! Aye, and your child's, too--ha, ha, I made her weep for the hour in which she was born!" She tosses her white arms wildly in the air, and laughs low and wickedly with the glare of malice and revenge in her flashing, black eyes. She is transformed from the handsome, clever woman of the world into a mocking devil. Even Ivy, who knows her mother's heartlessness as none other know, stares with distended eyes at the infuriated woman. She involuntarily recalls a verse she has somewhere read: "Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned, And hell no fury like a woman scorned."