“How dare you talk to me of confidence, traitress that you are? How durst you even approach me, serpent! viper! after your black treachery? What do you mean by braving me? Are you enamored of a broken head? Or do you think your own too hard to be broken? At what do you value your life, pray? What hinders me now from strangling you? Why didn’t you fly with your hopeful daughter? Don’t you expect me to hurl you out of doors after her? How durst you cross my path after your treachery? Viper, answer me, I say!” he vociferated, striding toward the lounge, grasping her shoulder, and jerking her to her feet before him. “Answer! How dared you face me after your black treachery?” “It was no treachery,” answered Alice, pale and trembling, yet with a certain gentle dignity in her words and tone; “it was no treachery; I broke no promise; I betrayed no trust; I am incapable of doing either.” “Silence, traitress!” he thundered, shaking her furiously; “I do not ask you for any impudent falsehood; I will not, by Heaven, permit you to tell me one! I ask you how you dared to meet me here?” “Oh-h-h!” sighed Alice, suddenly sinking at his feet. “It was to return to my allegiance; at whatever personal risk, to yield myself to you; to abide henceforth by my duties. And oh, General Garnet, do not misunderstand me! If I have humbled myself before you—vainly, perhaps, it is not from so base a motive as fear! Oh, I have outlived and outsuffered the fear of pain—the fear of death—the fear of anything that might befall me! I am at your feet. If I have placed myself unconditionally in your hands, it is for the sake of the holiest principles, the most sacred duties. General Garnet, you believe me—I see that you do! General Garnet, listen to me farther; this is positively the first time in our married life of seventeen years that I ever opposed you.” “The first time that you ever successfully opposed me, madam; and, by Heaven, you have made a signal beginning!” commented General Garnet, no longer speaking in a furious voice, but in the dry, hard, stern tone, and fixed, inflexible brow with which he had in the beginning of their interview heard and replied to her gentle words. The burst of violent passion had passed away and left him—the hard, scornful, sarcastic, yet cool, calculating, dissembling, most dangerous man that he was before. Alice gazed up at his face, seeking to read the changed expression there; but it passed her skill, and she murmured slowly: