He attempted to draw the girl into his encircling arms, her wonderful beauty suddenly dawning upon him; but she shrank from his embrace, and from the approach of his brandy-reeking lips, as though he had been a scorpion. With a suddenness that took him greatly aback, and for an instant at a disadvantage, she freed herself from his grasp, and stood facing him like a young tragedy queen in all her furious anger and outraged pride. "Do not utter another word, Lester Armstrong!" she panted, "you only add insult to injury--why it seems to me some horrible trick of the senses--some nightmare--to imagine even that I could ever have cared for you--to have believed you noble, honorable and--a gentleman. Why, you almost seem to be a different person in his guise--you are so changed in tone and manner from him to whom I gave my heart. The affection that I thought I had for you died a violent death." She did not notice that the man before her started violently at these words--but the look of fear in his eyes gave place the next instant to braggadocio. He would have answered her, but she held up her little white hand with a gesture commanding silence, saying, slowly, with quivering lips: "I repeat, the affection that I believed filled my heart for you died suddenly when I told you that I had changed my mind about eloping, and instead of studying my desires you insisted that the arrangement must be carried out." "My--my--love for you prompted it, Faynie," he exclaimed, in a maudlin voice. He knew he had the name wrong, but could not think what it was to save his life. "Come, now, let's kiss and make up, and love each other in the same old way, as the song goes." "What! love a man who thrusts me into a coach despite my entreaties, takes me to a church, and with a revolver pressed close to my heart--beneath my cloak--forces me to become his wife! No. No! I loathe, abhor you--open that door and let me go!" With an unsteady spring he placed himself between her and the door, crying angrily as he ground out a fierce imprecation from between his white teeth. "Come, now, none of that, my beauty. You're my wife all right, no matter how much of a fuss you make over it. I want to be agreeable, but you persist in raising the devil in me, and though you may not know it, I've a deuce of a temper when I'm thoroughly roused to anger--at least that's what the folks who know me say.