"Leave me alone!" cried Mrs. Paslow, wrenching herself free. "I intend to stop in my own house." "My house--not yours." "I am your wife." "And just now you confessed to a feigned death to commit bigamy? I have a great mind to give my lawyers instructions to apply for a divorce." "Give them to Tuft, then," cried Mrs. Paslow, her fair face convulsed with fury. "He is Alpenny's lawyer, and knows all about me, and all about you. See! see!"--she pointed a mocking finger at Vivian who had turned away with a gesture of despair--"he dare not face the law!" "If you mean that you will denounce him for having killed Mr. Alpenny," said Beatrice in a clear low voice, "you are wrong. I can clear Mr. Paslow's character. I can save him, and I will!" "Indeed! Why?" "Because I love him. Why he married you, how he married you, I do not know; but I believe that you trapped him into----" "Trapped him, indeed!" shouted Mrs. Paslow. "I could have married a dozen better men than he. He is a coward--a milksop--a--a thief! Ah!" she cried as Beatrice recoiled with a shudder, "you know the truth now. This dainty, well-born gentleman--this honourable man--is a thief, who was tried for shoplifting." "And who was acquitted," said Paslow, deadly pale. "It was you who were condemned, and rightly: God forgive me for saying so. After all, bad as you are, you are my wife." "Vivian," said Beatrice, with her face drawn with agony, "is what this woman says true?" "True--quite true. And I'll thank you to speak of me more respectfully," snapped Mrs. Paslow. "Is it true?" asked Beatrice again, paying no attention to this spiteful speech. "Quite true," said Vivian, drawing a long breath and prepared to face the worst; "this is the power she has held over me. That she can send me to prison is a lie; but she can disgrace my name, by telling my friends that I was accused of shoplifting." "But was it not in the papers?" asked Beatrice anxiously. "No. I was accused under another name, Beatrice. I married that woman"--he pointed to Mrs. Paslow, who was still fuming with rage--"when my father was alive. She was the daughter of our old servant, who became a shepherd. Afterwards, when a child, and when I was a child, she came here, and Mrs. Lilly helped her for the sake of her father. I was a boy and foolish. She was clever and unscrupulous. She grew weary of this quiet life, and went to town. I thought that I loved her----" "And you did," panted Mrs. Paslow. "I did not," said Vivian sternly. "I was entrapped, as you know well.--It was a year later that I met her, when in town, and then she was the associate of thieves and rogues. Alpenny had seen her here; he inveigled her into his nets, and used her in the West End as a decoy in the same way as he used Major Ruck. She met me. I believed that she was good--that she was still my old playfellow. I married her under my own name, but in order to save the feelings of my father, I lived with her as my wife under another name."