Forget the past! Is it likely? Will the memory of her suffering childhood ever pass away? Will the recollection of her wedding day fade from her mind? Will the six years of torture as his wedded wife disappear like a dream? Above all, can she ever forget her first meeting with Harry Kintore, the heart’s awakening that came with it, or the terrible moment when, struck down at her feet, his dear eyes looked their love for the last time? Impossible. He grinds his teeth with rage does Lord Westray as her clear, sad voice distinctly gives him his answer. He is racking his brain for a means of overcoming her, and forcing her once more to obey his will. The fact that she defies him, hates him, loathes him, has refused him, only arouses in him more madly than ever the desire to become possessed of her once again. Lord Westray possesses, in a heightened degree, in an aggravated form, the characteristic peculiar to all men, of desiring that which is either hard to get, or which denies itself to them, and which, if once obtained, fades in value in their eyes. It is Speranza’s resistance to his wishes that fires him with the fury of a wild animal to regain her. “You shall repent this!” he mutters angrily. “Speranza, you should know better than to defy _me_. Have I not been a match for you twice? and, by God! if you do not do as I ask now I will be again.” She shudders with horror as she hears his cold-blooded words, triumphing at his past deeds of brutality and crime. She pulls herself together, however. She is alone with him, and must keep him at bay. Speranza is no coward. “I do not fear you,” she answers haughtily; “you cannot do me more evil than you have already. I am beyond the reach of your vengeance now. Nothing _you_ can do can harm _me_.” “I don’t know so much about that,” he replies savagely. “How about Hector D’Estrange?” She starts, and the rich blood flushes to her face as she eyes him with evident terror. Can it be that he knows, that he will unveil the secret before—but no, it is impossible; she has it safe enough. He notes the start, the crimson blush, and the look of terror, and he congratulates himself on having, by a chance shot, hit on the right point to cow her. “You’re a fine person to play the prude and the proper,” he says, with a sneer. “They used to tell me that you were inconsolable over that ass Kintore, but the beauty of Hector D’Estrange appears to have effected a sudden cure. I congratulate you on your new conquest. You have aimed high. He is the rising man of his day, and you have thrown your net well to catch the golden fish. Are you not ashamed of yourself, however, woman,—you who are over the forties, to take up with a boy of twenty-one?”