"But they told me you were dead. They told me you were dead!" she gasped, as if she were in her own death throes. "Even if they had told you truly--even if I had been dead--dead by the hand of your father--could that circumstance have excused you for rushing with such indecent haste to the altar with another man? It was but a poor tribute to the memory of the husband of your choice (if he had been dead) to marry again within six months." "Oh, mercy! Oh, my heart! my heart! They forced me into that marriage, Waldemar! They forced me into that marriage! I was as helpless as an infant in the hands of my father and my mother!" she panted, in a voice that was the more heart-rending from half suppression. "Valerie! love! wife!" murmured Volaski, in low and tender tones, as he essayed to take her hand. But she snatched it from him hastily, gasping: "Do not speak to me in that way! Do not call me love or wife!" "No man on earth has a better right to speak to you in this way than I have. No _other_ man in the world has the right to call you love or wife but me! You _are_ my wife!" grimly answered the young count. "I am the wife of the Duke of Hereward. Oh, Heaven, that I were a corpse instead!" gasped Valerie. "'The wife of the Duke of Hereward!' Have you then forgotten our betrothal at St. Petersburg? Our flight from Warsaw to St. Vito? Our marriage at the little chapel of Santa Maria? Our short, blissful honeymoon in the vine-dresser's cottage under the Apennines?" he inquired, bitterly. "I have forgotten nothing! Oh, Heaven! Oh, earth! Oh, Waldemar! that I could die! that I could die!" she wailed in low, heartbroken tones. It was well for her that the corner sofa stood in the shade, far removed from the seats of the other guests in that long drawing-room. "Valerie! love! wife!" he murmured again. "Oh, Waldemar, if I were your wife, as I truly believed myself then to have been, oh, why did you not defend and protect me from all the world, even from my father--even from myself? Oh, why did you suffer me to be torn from your protection, to be deceived with a false story of your death, and forced into this marriage? Oh, Waldemar! if I were indeed and in truth your lawful wife, as I believed myself to be, why, oh why did you permit all these evils to happen to me? Ah, what a position is mine! What a position! I cannot bear it! I will not bear it! I will not live! I will kill myself! I _ought_ to kill myself! It is the only way out of this!" she wailed, wringing her hands. "I will kill that Duke of Hereward!" hissed Volaski, through his clenched teeth. "Hush! For mercy's sake, hush! Put away such thoughts from your heart! I, the only wrong-doer, should be the only victim! Whatever wrong has been done, the Duke of Hereward has been blameless. He knew nothing of my former marriage; if he had, I do not believe he would have married me, even if I had been a princess." "He was deceived, then?" coldly inquired the count.