"I ask you again, Lady Fairvale," exclaims the small fury, "why do you refuse to speak to us?" "Oh, God, give me strength," Lady Vera prays, silently, "to keep the oath of vengeance made to my dying father!" The memory of her parent's cruel wrongs flashes into her mind and steels her heart. She remembers her mother's broken heart, her father's ruined life, her own joyless, slavish girlhood, driven by these two women who now stand glaring stonily upon her, for Mrs. Cleveland, coming in search of her daughter, has become a sudden and amazed spectator of the curious scene. "I will tell why I hold myself above you," Lady Vera answers, in a voice that quivers with scornful indignation. "It is because you are false and vile--a guilty woman, and a shameless sinner!" "How dare you traduce me thus?" Mrs. Noble shrieks, in anger and amazement. "I dare, because I speak the truth before God," her enemy answers, fearlessly. "How dare you claim to be Leslie Noble's wife, when you know that I, his first wife, Vera Campbell, am living?" CHAPTER XXV. It was a striking _tableau_, there beneath the over-arching trees that fair, calm, summer night. Lady Vera's beautiful face was all pale with passionate scorn and indignation as she leaned upon her lover's arm. Her enemies had started back as her scathing accusation fell upon them, and they now regarded her with looks of wrath, blent with honest astonishment. Colonel Lockhart's face had turned to a dull, ashen gray, like the pallor of death, but he stood his ground bravely, like the soldier that he was. Lady Vera did not dare to look at him, but beyond one swift, convulsive start, as though a sword had pierced his heart, the arm that supported her did not even tremble. He had steeled himself to bear his pain and make no sign. "Colonel Lockhart," Mrs. Cleveland exclaims, starting boldly to the front, "I would advise you to take Lady Fairvale home to her friends. She must surely be raving mad. I know not how she came into possession of any facts concerning us, but I swear to you, and can prove my assertion, that Vera Campbell, the first wife of my son-in-law, Leslie Noble, has been dead and buried three years. Is it not so, Leslie?" "It is perfectly true," he answers, gazing curiously at the beautiful girl who has claimed him as her husband. "If Lady Fairvale be Vera Campbell Noble, then she has risen from the grave itself to claim me, for I saw her buried three years ago, and I erected a costly marble monument to her memory." "She committed suicide!" Ivy screams out, spitefully. "She died in my mother's house. I saw her lying dead, and I saw her buried."