''Oh! oh! finding I won't fight, you fancy you can frighten me by threats of assassination. It is rather creditable to your ingenuity, Mr. Livermore, but I had provided for such a contingency. The United States Minister has been apprized of my arrival, and I left certain papers with his Secretary to be opened to-morrow, in case I should not return by noon, explaining our mutual relations very concisely yet definitely. Now you know that the Mexican idea of justice, though lenient in the extreme to natives, is just as extremely severe to foreigners, so that I would hardly advise you to tempt the gallows, unless, indeed, you have less objection to suicide, for I really think that is the only way you can possibly cheat the hangman, unless you condescend to allow me to pay my respects to the American Legation to-morrow, in the forenoon.' 'On the stage, especially in the sanguinary melodrama, it is astonishing how little respect is paid to the gallows; but somehow in the humbler walks of every day life, it exercises a very salutary, deterring influence on a very large class of minds; and I was, therefore, in no way surprised to hear my neighbor resume the conversation in a tone decidedly an octave or two lower. ''You have entirely misinterpreted my meaning. I may have thought of here forcing a quarrel on you, but the commission of the crime you dare insinuate, never entered my brain. But, now, sir, one last question: Why do you persist in seeking an interview with the woman you pretend to hate?' ''Pretend to hate! nay, there is no pretense, I hate, detest, and loathe her; not because she betrayed me; not because she stained an honorable name; not because she made me kill her lover; not because she has ruined my happiness; but because knowing--feeling all this, and more than words have power to convey--because knowing her infamy and shame, I still, still love her.' ''_You_ love her still!' cried Arthur. 'Oh! thanks for that one avowal; that explains fully the bitterness with which you calumniate her.'