She knit her brows, and her pale lips twitched nervously. "Then you are still bent upon wrecking my life?" she said slowly and distinctly as she faced him. "I offer you silence in exchange for my freedom, for it is you alone who can give me that. Yet you refuse." "Yes," he said. "I refuse absolutely." "Then you would debar me from happiness with the man I love?" she said in a low, deep whisper. "You, the man to whose machinations I owe my present wretchedness, refuse to free me from the trammels you yourself have cast about me--you refuse to tell the truth in exchange for my silence." He looked at her calmly with withering contempt. "I have no desire for the silence of such as you," he answered quickly. "I fear nothing that you may say. Threats from you are mere empty words, cara." "Then listen!" she cried, her brilliant eyes again flashing in desperation. "To-morrow I shall call upon Castellani at the Embassy, and tell him the truth." "You dare not!" he gasped fiercely. His face had blanched instantly as, advancing a couple of steps towards her with clenched hands, he gazed threateningly into her eyes. "I have given you an alternative which you have rejected, Signor Capitano," she said, taking up her fur-trimmed coat. "You defy me; and I wish you good-night." "You intend to expose the whole of the facts?" he cried in dismay. "You will incriminate yourself!" "I care nothing for that. My happiness is now at an end. For the future I have no thought, no care, now that you and I are enemies. As I have already said, traitors die slowly in London, but they do die." "You shall not go to Castellani," the Captain muttered between his set teeth; and with a cry of uncurbed, uncontrollable rage he sprang upon her before she could defend herself or raise an alarm, and seizing her, he compressed his strong, sinewy fingers upon her slim white throat. "You shan't go!" he cried. "No further word shall pass your pretty lips--curse you! I'll--I'll kill you!" CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. SMAYLE'S DILEMMA. Tristram's sinewy fingers tightened upon the slender white throat of the helpless woman until her breath was crushed from her, her face became crimson, and in her wild, starting eyes was a ghastly expression of suffering and despair. "Mercy!" she managed to gasp with difficulty. "Ah, no! Let me go! let me go!" "Your evil tongue can ruin me. But you shall not!" he cried in a frenzy of anger, his face suffused by a fierce, murderous passion. "By Heaven, you shall die!" "If--if you kill me," she shrieked, "you will suffer; for even though I'm outcast, there is a law here, in your England, to deal with murderers." "Outcast!" he echoed wildly, with an imprecation. "Yes; curse you! Is there any wonder that you are hounded out of Italy, after all that has occurred? Is there any wonder, after what took place in Tuscany, that I now hold you within my hands, eager to extinguish the last remaining spark of your life?"