“I’ll tell you,” she answered; “I was lonely and miserable, and you seemed the only creature that I had to care for. I thought you were fond of me, and I thought it was wonderful that any one as clever as you could really care for me. That you regarded me as you did I could no more have imagined than I could have suspected you of picking my pocket or murdering me. And that night in the cottage, when in my loneliness and distress I seemed to be holding out my arms to you, asking you to protect and comfort me, you laughed at me and struck me a blow in the face. It was the end of my dream. I wakened then and saw the reality. But you--you as you are--as I know you now--I never loved, I never could have loved.” Her words inflamed his rage, not alone against her, but against himself, who had had her in this pliant mood in his very arms and had lost her. “And was it only a desire for consolation and sympathy that made you behave toward me in what was hardly--a--” he paused as if hesitating for a word that would in a seemly manner express his thought, in reality racking his brains for the one that would hurt her most--“hardly a maidenly way considering your lack of interest in me?” The word he had chosen told. Her color sank suddenly away, leaving her very pale. Her face seemed to stiffen and lose its youthful curves. “I don’t think,” she said slowly, “that it’s necessary to continue this conversation. It doesn’t seem to me to be very profitable to anybody.” She looked at him, but he made no movement. “You will have to excuse me, Mr. Essex,” she said, moving toward the door, “but if you won’t go I must.” The expected had happened. He sprang before her and locked the door. Leaning his back against it, he stared at her. Both were now very pale. “No,” he said, hearing his own voice shaken by his rapid breathing, “you’re not going. I’ve not said half I came to say. I’ve not come to-day to plead and sue like a beggar for the love that you’re ready to give one day and take back the next. I’ve other things to talk about.” “Open the door,” she commanded; “open the door and let me out. I want to hear nothing that you have to say.” “Don’t you want to hear who you are?” he asked. The words passed through Mariposa like a current of electricity. Every nerve in her body seemed to tighten. She looked at him, staring and repeating: “Hear who I am?” “Yes,” he said, leaning toward her while one hand still gripped the door-handle; “hear what your real name is, and who you are? Hear who your father was and where you were born?” Her face blanched under his eyes. The sight pleased him, suggesting as it did weakness and fear that would give him back his old ascendancy. Horror invaded her. He, of all people on earth, to know! She could say nothing; could hardly think; only seemed a thing of ears to hear. “Hear who my father was!” she repeated, this time almost in a whisper.