"Oh, shameless falsehood!" Vera breaks out, warmly. "I did not die, and you know it. The bitter drug with which I thought to end my wretched life, turned out to be only a sleeping potion after all. Will you deny, Marcia Cleveland, that Lawrence Campbell came to you that night to denounce you for the falsehood with which you had betrayed him, and to ask, at your hands, his wronged wife and child?" Livid with rage and fear, the wicked woman stares at her fearless accuser. How has this beautiful countess, with Vera Campbell's face, learned the secret of her past life? "Lady Fairvale," she answers, "I do not know how you, a stranger, have learned the secrets of my past life, but I will answer your questions fairly and truthfully. Lawrence Campbell did indeed come to me as you assert, but his daughter had been buried that very day in Glenwood. I bade him seek his wife and child in the grave, and he fell down like one dead at my feet. I caused my servants to throw him into the street like a dog, and I know not, to this day, if he be living or dead." "He is dead," Lady Vera answers, with blazing eyes. "He has been dead almost a year. He lived but for vengeance on you, Marcia Cleveland, and when he died, he bade me swear an oath of vengeance on you. He bade me avenge my martyred mother's bitter wrongs. It is for this I have spoken. Do you think I did not shrink from claiming that craven coward there," pointing a scornful finger, "as my husband?" Flushing scarlet under her lightning scorn, Leslie Noble advances. "Lady Fairvale, if indeed you are my wife," he says, "and," insolently, "no man could have a wife more beautiful, will you tell me by what strange chance you were rescued from the grave where I, myself, saw you laid?" "I deny that I was ever buried," Vera flashes out angrily. "My father told me nothing of that. He declared that he had me carried away from Mrs. Cleveland's in a deep narcotic sleep." "Is it true that Lawrence Campbell was the Earl of Fairvale?" Mrs. Cleveland demands, looking at Colonel Lockhart. "It is perfectly true, madam," he answered, coldly.