He was mounted on his hobby now, and his words came with a sudden fluency for which his previous taciturnity made her unprepared. "She was quite young--young enough to have been unworldly, you would have thought--when she jilted a poor man to marry a rich one. In spite of that innocent exterior, she was as clever as a pickpocket, as cautious as a Jew. Afterwards I remembered how carefully she had questioned me as to the likelihood of my coming into this property. There was a life between me and it. She was not taking any chances!... But, after all, the life failed. I came into my inheritance not so many years after my jilting ... and, by the Lord! when she was a needy widow and I was a rich man, she would have married me, had I so much as held up a finger. Do you deny it?" Virginia could hardly breathe. If the hands she had clutched when drowning had contracted about her throat and held her down under water, she might have felt something the same consternation. Love! Love at first sight! Why, the man loathed her. "But," she brought out breathlessly, "if this--if this is what you think of me, why--why have you married me?" "I'll tell you why. I married because I am siren-proof, and I am going to reform you. You're young; you may not be irreclaimable. We'll see if I can change your nature; but if I can't do that, I swear I will control your actions. For the first time in your life, you are going to be disciplined. The starting-point for your training is that you should be completely cut off from your past. Therefore, you will not again see any of the members of your family, either here, or elsewhere. You need not look so incredulous. I carry out the things I undertake. Don't suppose you can escape from me." The hatred in his voice was the outcome of twenty years of morbid egotism. The very atrocity of his amazing tirade helped his wife to rally. All her dignity, all her good breeding, came now to her support. She spoke low but steadily. "It is true that I cannot escape. I bound myself this morning, by vows which to me are more binding than cords. But let me remind you that you also took vows--to love and to cherish." He bowed ironically. "Oh, be sure that I shall cherish my piece of perfection," he replied, "and, when I have broken her to harness, I may reward her with my affection." Her face, as she met his look, merited study. She had found a source of consolation in her misery--the consciousness of her own immense height above him. Terror, which had been succeeded by disgust, now disappeared altogether in sheer contempt. "You have made us quits," she said simply. "This morning I felt myself under a great weight of obligation. Now you have paid yourself in full, paid yourself in insult to a helpless woman." "Take care! Take care what you say to me!" he cried, swayed by a tumult of inexplicable feeling.