He had his voice perfectly under his command as he leant lazily back in his chair and looked up at her. 'Your husband's death!' he echoed. 'Don't you think, Mrs.--Mrs. Claxton, you had better drop all that nonsense with me?' Alice scarcely understood his words, but there was no mistaking the marked insolence of his tone. 'I--I don't understand you,' she said, in amazement. 'O, yes, you do!' said Mr. Wetter, with the same lazy air. 'I am not Mr. Statham, you know, nor one of your neighbours in the terrace here. I am a man of the world, and understand these matters. Don't talk about dead husbands to me!' For an instant Alice stood petrified. For an instant a vague idea flashed across her that John might not be dead after all. She had never seen him after death. Could there by any possibility have been a mistake in his identity? 'I don't understand you, Mr. Wetter,' she said, in a low, hurried voice. 'Do you mean to say that my husband, Mr. Claxton, is not dead?' 'I mean to say,' said Wetter, 'what you know very well, that the man with whom you lived in the cottage at Hendon--I saw you there--was not your husband at all.' Alice bent forward, leaning her hands upon the table, and looking at him for an instant with parted lips and heaving breast. Then she said, 'Not my husband! John Claxton not my husband!' 'John Claxton indeed!' cried Wetter. 'Now, how perfectly ridiculous it is in you to attempt to keep up this nonsense with me! Call the man by his right name--acknowledge him in his proper position!' She bent nearer to him with her eyes fixed upon his, and said in a low voice, 'Are you mad, or am I?' In an instant Wetter's intelligence showed him the real state of the case. This woman was not what he had supposed. She believed herself what she professed to be, the widow of a man named Claxton, not the mistress of dead John Calverley. What should he do? His rage was over, his reason had returned, and he was prepared to act in the way which would best serve his purpose. Should he withdraw from the position he had advanced, getting out of it as best he might, or should he point out to her how matters really stood, the fraud of which he had been the victim, involving her degradation and her shame? That would be the better plan, he thought, for the end he had in view. To destroy her worship of John Calverley's memory, to point out to her how low she had fallen, and then to offer himself as her consoler. That was the best game in his power, and he determined to play it.