"I have not the faintest idea," I reply, still haughty, though thoroughly upset, and nervous. "I--am--Marmaduke--Carrington's--lawful--wife," she says, biting out the words with cruel emphasis, and nodding her head at me between each pause. I neither stagger nor faint, nor cry out: I simply don't believe her. She is mad, then, after all. Oh, if Tynon, or Harris, or any one, would only come! I calculate my chance of being able to rush past her and gain the door in safety, but am disheartened by her watchfulness. I remember, too, how fatal a thing it is to show symptoms of terror before a maniac, and with an effort collect myself. "If you have nothing better to say than such idiotic nonsense," I return, calmly, "I think this interview may as well come to an end." As I utter this speech in fear and trembling, I once more go slowly in the direction of the bell. "Oh! must you then see my marriage-lines?" says the woman with a sneer, drawing from her bosom a folded paper. "Is there too much of the stage about my little declaration? Come, then, behold them; but at a distance, carita, at a distance." She spreads open the paper upon the table before me. Impelled by some hideous curiosity, I draw near. With one brown but shapely finger, she traces the characters, and I read--I read with dull eyes, the terrible words that seal my fate. No thought of a forgery comes to sooth me; I know in that one long awful moment that my eyes have seen the truth. Mechanically I put out my hand to seize the paper, but she pushed me roughly back. "No, no, ma belle," she laughs coolly; "not that!" "It is a lie," I cry, fiercely; "a lie!" Where now is all my nervousness, my childish terror? My blood flames into life. For the time I am actually mad with passion, as mad as I imagined her a little while ago. A cruel, uncontrollable longing to kill her--to silence forever the bitter, mocking tones, to shut the vindictive eyes that seem to draw great drops of blood from my heart--takes possession of me. I catch hold of a heavy ruler that lies on a Davenport near, and make a spring towards her. But I am as an infant in the hands of my opponent; I feel myself flung violently to one side against a wall, while the ruler falls crashing into an opposite corner. "Bah!" she cries through her teeth. "Can English blood get warm? I did not believe it until now. So you love the handsome husband, do you? That, after all, is not a husband, see you, but a lover. This is my house, _Mees!_ I This is _my_ room! Leave it, I command you!" She laughs long and loudly; but all my fury has died out. "I do not believe one word of all your vile story," I declare, doggedly, knowing I am lying as I speak; "it flavors too much of the melodrama to be real. You are an impostor; but you calculate foolishly when you think to gain money from me by your false tale. You have been seen more than once about these grounds before now.---"