"There!" she said. "It is gone. Forget it, my dear. It was nothing but the vain boast of a brute, a coward and a braggadocio! He is on the ocean now, a fugitive from justice--yes, my dear, no less. He could not stay in this country without the danger of being prosecuted for bigamy, and sent to the State prison. He dared not stay and face that peril. In all human probability, we shall never see him again." "But, mamma, has he--can he have--any claim on me? He referred me to you for proof that he has. What proof did he mean, mamma?" pleaded the girl. "I do not believe that he has any claims on you, Odalite," gravely replied the lady. "But, mamma, do you know that he has not?" inquired poor Odalite, in an access of anxiety. "He has no claim that either the law or the gospel would sustain, or that your father would admit for a single instant." "Oh, mamma, but has he any? Oh, mother, dear mother, speak plainly to me! He referred me to you for proofs that the marriage of last Tuesday was a lawful one. What proofs? What did he mean, mother?" pleaded Odalite, wringing her hands in growing doubt and distress. "He meant to brag, to boast, to threaten to make you grieve, fear and suffer--the brute, the poltroon, the miscreant!" hissed the lady, stamping her foot. "But, mother--oh, mother--the proofs, the proofs he spoke of!" persisted Odalite, white with dread. "They are no proofs of anything; but I will tell you what he was writing of. Two days after the scene at the All Faith Church, while your father and your cousin were both out, that outlying brigand seized the opportunity for which he had been watching, and came in here to see and threaten me." "Oh, mother, dear mother!" said Odalite, in tender compassion. "Never mind, my child. He is away now, thank Heaven! His talk to me was all of a piece with his letters to you. That is enough to say about it--except that, during the interview, he told me something that I believe to be a mere tissue of falsehoods." "And what was that, mamma?" "He told me--think of the audacity and shamelessness of such an avowal!--he told me that at the time he married the Widow Wright, at St. Sebastian, he had a wife living in London." "Oh, mother!" said Odalite, with a low cry of horror. "To prove it, he took a slip of paper from his pocketbook, which he said was cut from the London _Times_, and which he said that he had received while staying at Niagara with us. It was, in fact, the notice of the death of his wife, and, if I remember rightly, it ran something like this: "'Died.--Suddenly, at Anglewood Manor, on August twenty-fifth, in the forty-ninth year of her age, Lady Mary, eldest daughter of the late and sister of the present Earl of Middlemoor, and wife of Col. the Hon. Angus Anglesea, late of the H.E.I.C.S.'