“I have had enough heroics,” he said. “No one has murdered any one, as you are crazy enough to think, and if you were in your right mind no one would be kinder to you than I. As it is, all I mean to do with you is to keep you here till you come back to your senses. You’ll never get away while you rave like this. I told you who your mother was--that lunatic’s daughter, but I did not tell you who your father was. You little fool, I am your only relation, your only legal guardian!” “No, no!” she cried, and covered her eyes with her hands that at least she might not see his face when he said he was her father. Yet if he did it would make Erle her brother, unless he were really his nephew! “You’re quite wrong,” said Erceldonne, with his jarring laugh, as he saw that at last he had made her flinch. “It was not I who had the doubtful felicity of being your parent.” “Then I am----” she faltered; she did not believe his denial of her. What could she be, who had madness and wickedness for father and mother? “You’re no one,” he answered shortly, “while you cling to your crazy delusions. If you give them up you’ll get away from me and be Raimond’s wife. But he doesn’t want a crazy one, and you can think that over at your leisure.” An older woman would have realized that whoever she was, she must be worth having for them to care nothing for her strain of lunacy; or else that there was a lie somewhere. Beryl was ignorant of the world. The old vacancy came into her eyes as she stared at the dying coals on the hearth. This house was her prison; she would never get away from it except as the wife of a man who, instinct told her, was a murderer. And she had let them take her past Mother Felicitas, trusting in her own strength to bring home crime to men like these. In all the world there was no one to help her; those two she had loved were dead. This was a house the world thought empty. No one would come here, or hear her if she screamed her life out. She did not even know where it stood. She looked up to see Erceldonne was gone, and Mrs. Fuller standing by her. “You had better go to bed,” the woman said, not unkindly. “You are to sleep with me.” But the girl never answered. Oh! why had she not died with Andria? CHAPTER XXXVIII. DREAMS. As if she were blind and dumb Beryl Corselas followed Mrs. Fuller up-stairs to a bedroom as bare as the rest of the house. The woman would have talked to her, but she shrank away, conscious that she was a prisoner, and Mrs. Fuller one of her jailers. She saw another thing as time went on--that day and night changed places in this house. There were no blazing fires in the daylight, only smoldering coals that made no smoke that tell a tale of habitation. And the doors were never unlocked, nor was she ever alone to try them. Mrs. Fuller and Erceldonne were with her turn about. Erle had vanished, and all count of time seemed to have vanished, too.