But she glides backward as he advances, and, putting the table between herself and him, she hurries on, never heeding that she has, by this movement, increased the distance from the outer door--and safety. "You have carried your game too far!" she says. "When you first appeared before me, so soon after the loss of my adopted parents that it would seem you were waiting for that event--" "So we were, my child," he interrupts, "for we had promised not to come near you during their lifetime." "You had promised _never_ to approach me, _never_ to claim me, as the documents I found among my mother's--among Mrs. Uliman's papers prove. Oh," she cries, wringing her hands and lifting her fair face heavenward; "oh, my mother! my dear, sweet, gentle mother! Oh, my father! the truest, the tenderest a wretched orphan ever had on earth! that Death should take _you_, and Life bring me such creatures to fill your places! But they cannot, they never shall!" "Oh, good Lord!" mutters Papa under his breath, "those fools upstairs will hear too much!" But Leslie's indignation has swallowed up all thought of caution, and her words pour out torrent-like. "Oh, if I had but denounced you at the first!" she cries; "or forced you to prove your claim! Oh, if you had shown yourselves _then_ in all your greed and heartlessness! But while I was Leslie Uliman, with only a moderate fortune, you were content to take what I could give, and not press what you are pleased to term your _claim_ upon my affections. Affections! The word is mockery from your lips! In consideration of the large sums I paid you, you promised never to approach me in the future, and I, fool that I was, believing myself free from you, married David Warburton, only to find myself again your victim, to know you at last in all your baseness." Papa Francoise, unable to stem the tide of her eloquence, shows signs of anger, but she never heeds him. "Since I became the wife of a rich man, you have been my constant torment and terror. Threatening and wheedling by turns, black-mailing constantly, you have drained my purse, you have made my life a burden. And I came here to-night to say, I will have no more of your persecution! All of _my_ money has been paid into your hands, but not one dollar of my _husband's_ wealth shall ever come to you from me. I swear it!" The old man again moves nearer. "Ah, ungrateful girl!" he cries, feigning the utmost grief; "ah, unkind girl!" And his affectation of sorrow causes two unseen observers to grin with delight, and brings to Leslie's countenance an expression of intense disgust. Moving back as he approaches, she throws up her head with an impatient gesture, and the veil which has covered it falls to her shoulders, revealing even by that dim light, the glisten of jewels in her ears--great, gleaming diamonds, which she, in her haste and agitation, has forgotten to remove before setting out upon this unsafe errand.