Sir Joseph turned, and down the pier came a short, dark figure very rapidly, panting for breath. The figure was that of a woman, and advanced straight up to the millionaire. Branwin pushed the newcomer back, and was about to speak, when she flung aside her veil. The millionaire staggered against Miss Pearl, and turned quite green with terror. "What is it? Oh! what is it?" cried the dancer, infected with his terror. "Who is it, you mean," said the woman, with a taunting laugh. "It is Lady Branwin, Miss Rosy Pearl. You won't be able to marry my husband after all." Miss Pearl, for once, was shaken out of her calmness, and but for her fashionable hat her hair would have risen on end. "Lady Branwin is dead!" she gasped, shrinking from the shapeless figure. "Lady Branwin is very much alive," jeered the other woman, pointing at Sir Joseph. "Look at that beast--that beast!" She glared. Sir Joseph, astonished at this speech from his hitherto meek wife, recovered himself with a violent effort. "You aren't Dora. She would never had dared to speak to me like that. You are Flora, who--" "I am Dora, who has been hammered into hardness by your cruelty. Flora is dead, and I masqueraded as her with the yashmak, and--" "Then--then," stammered Miss Pearl, with genuine horror, "you killed her?" "Yes," said Lady Branwin, simply, and looked triumphantly at her husband. "I killed her because she threatened to tell Joseph that Audrey was not his daughter." "You--you fiend!" stuttered Branwin, with a look of positive terror in his eyes. He could not understand how his formerly meek wife had changed into this hard, desperate woman, any more than he could exactly grasp how she had arisen from the dead in this startling fashion. "I am what you have made me," said Lady Branwin, fiercely. "I was a good woman until you turned me into a fiend. But I have seen Audrey, and I have told her all the truth. Then I came down here to do justice." "How--how did you know that I was here?" demanded Sir Joseph, who did not like the sinister looks of his wife. "Audrey told me that you and that woman were coming down to see her. I ran away into the fog when Perry Toat would have arrested me, and caught the six o'clock train. On arriving here I went to the hotel, and they told me that you were on the pier. And now"--she turned violently on Miss Pearl--"don't you dare to marry my husband." Miss Pearl drew herself up. "I certainly shall not do so. My reputation--" "Is of the worst, you slut!" sneered Lady Branwin, beside herself with rage. "It is wholly false," gasped the dancer, on her dignity at once. "I have an unspotted reputation, and my mother--" "You are here alone with my husband. That is enough for me. How dare--" "Don't cry out so, Dora; you will draw a crowd," said Sir Joseph, noticing that several people were turning their heads towards the pier.