"You are a smarter and wickeder woman than I gave you credit for," Ivy resumes, curiously. "So, then, the tale you told Leslie Noble about Vera's dissipated father was altogether false." "Yes," her mother mutters, mechanically. But presently she starts up like one in a panic. "Ivy, we must go away from here," she exclaims, in a strange and hurried voice. "I am afraid to stay." "Afraid of what?" Ivy queries, impatiently. "Of Lawrence Campbell's vengeance," the woman answers, fearfully. "It is a fearful wrong I have done him, and he will strike me back. We must fly--fly from his wrath!" CHAPTER VIII. The unconscious man who has been so heartlessly thrust forth in the bleak, inclement night, lies still upon the wet and flinty pavement, his ghastly face upturned to the uncertain flicker of the street lamps, his eyes closed, his lips half parted as if he were, indeed, dead. No one is passing, no one notes that the form of an apparently dead man has been hustled out of the inhospitable gates of the stately Cleveland Mansion. None care to be abroad this wet and windy night. The chilly rain beats down into the still, white face, and at last revives him. He drags himself wearily up to his feet, and clinging to the iron spokes of the ornamental lawn fence, stares up at the dark, gloomy-looking building which now, with closed and darkened windows, appears dreary as a tomb. He shudders, and his eyes flash luridly in the darkness. "May the curse of God light upon her," he murmurs, distractedly. "She robbed me of everything, and laid my life bare and desolate. My heart is a bare and empty ruin where the loathsome bats and shrieking night birds of remorse flap their ebon wings in the haunted darkness. Edith, Vera, my wronged, my murdered darlings--would God that you might have lived to forgive me for the madness that ruined your lives, and broke your tender hearts!" No answer comes to his wild appeal from the wide and limitless spaces of the black night. Those two whom he adjures so despairingly, lie still "under the sod and the dew," deaf to his yearning calls, though he cry out ever so loudly to them, from his sore and tortured heart. And at last, tormented with doubts, and longing to know the truth, for he cannot trust the oath of the false Marcia Cleveland, he flings himself into a passing car that goes toward the cemetery, fired with the wild resolve that he would never believe her wicked assertion until he can prove its truth--not until looking into the coffin, and calling on her loved name, he shall know that his wife is surely dead, because she is dumb to the wild and yearning cry of his heart. A wild resolve--worthy of a madman. But Lawrence Campbell is scarcely sane to-night. Remorse and despair have driven him wild.