"There is no parallel between the cases," she answers, icily. "You can bring no precedent from fiction or history that could make me admire _you_, either in your own form or any other. I despise you, I have always despised you, and I warn you that my friends will rescue me out of your power. I left your lying note behind me with directions that I must be sought for if I failed to return. Even now they are searching for me. At any moment I expect them to rescue me." He pales at first, then laughs easily. "You were more crafty than I deemed you, but I am not frightened," he answers. "Do you know where you are? You are thirty miles from Fairvale Park, in the midst of a dense wood. You are occupying the only habitable chamber in a ruined and deserted old mansion, whose owner is in Egypt. The place has the name of being haunted, and no one ever ventures into the vicinity. I have hired the woman you saw just now at an extravagant bribe to remain here to guard and wait on you. I have sworn to her that you are mad, and she firmly believes me. She will regard all you say as the aimless ravings of a lunatic. Now do you believe it likely that you will soon be delivered out of my power?" She has no answer ready for him now. Despair has stricken her dumb. "It does not rest with your friends, it does not rest with me to say when you shall go free," he pursues, coolly. "It is all for you to say, Lady Vera. I am ready to make a treaty of peace with you at any time." "How?" she asks, with white lips. "You are my wife," he answers. "I love you, and if you will consent to acknowledge my claim upon you, and live with me, I will take you back to Fairvale Park to-morrow." "And do you think I would purchase freedom upon such ignominious terms?" she asks, with a curling lip. "Live with you, coward to your first wife, traitor to your second? Not for an hour. I would pine to death in this loathsome prison first, and die thanking Heaven for my happy release from the arts of a villain." "You forget that you are here alone, defenseless, utterly in my power," he answers, pale with anger and shame. "What is there to prevent me from forcing you to do my will?" Crimson for a moment, then pale as death again, Countess Vera lifts her hand. "God is here," she answers, solemnly, "God is here, and He will protect me. I tell you frankly," she goes on with vehement emphasis, "I will kill you, or I will kill myself before I will yield to your will. Do not attempt to drive me desperate." Pale with rage, he thrusts his hand into his breast and withdraws the missing memorandum-book. Lady Vera's face lights up at that sight. "So you _did_ have it," she cries out, quickly. "You are a thief as well as an abductor of helpless women! Oh, for shame, for shame!" His face grows black as night. "As you are in my power, you would do well to moderate your language," he answers, in the low tone of bitter rage. "Beware how you transform my love to hate!"