“It is useless to struggle with me,” he exclaimed, in an undertone. “You can scream for help, if you will, and bring hither your proud parents; I shall not quit my hold of you until I resign you into the custody of your father, who does not contemplate your departure, as he has just informed Lord Elsingham that you will join us in the drawing-room, when he would have the opportunity of further examining those fascinating attractions which he admired so much at dinner.” “Unhand me,” she cried, with intense anguish, acutely feeling the painful position in which she stood, and how much the man whom she now hated with an intense loathing had become, for the moment, the master of the situation. “When you have listened quietly to what I have to propose to you,” he answered, calmly. “What can you have to propose to me, but insults?” she replied, impatiently. “I do not offer them as such,” he answered, with a slight shrug of the shoulders; “if you will persist in so considering them, of course I cannot help it.” “In mercy let me depart; you do not know how desperate may be the consequences of detaining me here,” she cried, entreatingly. “Listen to me, Miss Grahame,” he returned, in a cold tone, and with slow enunciation. “Listen to what I have to say, and here in this spot, for I could not have selected one more fitting for my present subject.” She cast her eyes round her, oh heaven! too well she remembered it. She struggled madly to get free, but he held her with a cruel grip, and, half-fainting, she was compelled to pause. “There is a strange mystery enshrouding your actions at this present moment,” he continued, between his set teeth, “that I know; further, I believe that I have penetrated to its inmost recesses. Helen Gra-hame, before you set eyes upon me, you loved another---you met him clandestinely in this thicket.” Again Helen struggled to set herself free, but in vain. “It was his hand,” continued Vane, sternly, “which felled me to the earth, when I accidentally encountered him on this very spot. Let that pass. Helen Gra-hame, you loved that man. Yet you knowingly and deliberately employed all your stratagems, and turned upon me the full blaze of your charms, to capture my heart.” She shuddered and cowered down. “Your eye it was that sought mine, and when it encountered it, rested there. Your voice echoed mine--your smile was set playing for me--your hand rested on my arm, whenever opportunity offered. You were bland and tender to me, and coy by turns. I was never in your presence but you made me conscious of it by those peculiar artifices by which women attract men to their side. Loving another, Helen Grahame, you acted thus to me.” “It is unmanly to taunt me thus!” she ejaculated, in hoarse, quivering accents.