The beautiful face is deadly pale, the hands are clenched until the pink nails cut into the delicate palms. In silent agony she admits to herself that his threats are not at all idle ones. Sir Harry Clive's reluctant communications have prepared her for all this. "Well, what have you to say to all this?" he asks of the silent figure before him. "Nothing. I know that of myself I am utterly powerless. I leave my cause with God," she answers, briefly. He smothers a curse on his dark mustached lips. "So you will lose all rather than take me for your husband?" he asks her, in unfeigned amazement. She lifts her eyes for a moment, and surveys him with a look of steady contempt. "Have you still any doubt on that point?" she inquires, fearlessly and defiantly. "Let me assure you then that I would rather be a homeless beggar in the streets of London than submit to your loathsome love!" The look, the tone, the words, fill him with blind, overmastering rage. "By Heaven, I will make you repent those words!" he exclaims, springing toward her and clasping his arm around her slender waist. But with one piercing cry of terror Countess Vera puts her hand into her breast and withdraws a tiny, jewel-hilted dagger. Maddened with fear, she thrusts the keen blade into the arm that holds her so tightly, and with a scream of pain the villain releases her and retreats to the door. "Oh, Mr. Noble, your arm is all bleeding!" exclaims the woman, entering at that moment with the tea-tray. "Yes, my wife is in one of her occasional violent fits, and has tried to murder me," he answers, shortly. "She has a dagger which you must try to get away from her or she may hurt you too. Lock her into the room now and come down and dress my wound for me," he adds, stalking out of the room. CHAPTER XL. The woman advanced into the room and deposited her tea-tray on the table. A tempting little lunch was arranged upon it in a pretty china service. "Come, Mrs. Noble, and drink your tea while it is still warm," she said, coaxingly. "I know you are tired and hungry. Will you take a bit of this chicken salad and cold sliced ham? 'Twill do you good." "I have no appetite, thank you," Vera answers, turning her head aside. "Well, I'll leave the tray with you while I go and bind up master's wounded arm. Mayhap you'll eat by-and-bye," the woman answers kindly as she goes out, carefully locking the door behind her. Left to herself, Lady Vera draws a long breath of relief, and turning to a window, draws aside the heavy velvet curtain, glancing anxiously out for any possible prospect of release. Alas! her captor's words proved all too true. The first faint beams of dawn rising palely in the east, show her the wide, dense belt of woodland surrounding the ruined mansion in which she is imprisoned.