"What if I refuse?" he demanded, and she answered, quickly: "You could not injure me without bringing down harm upon yourself;" and with that vague threat the handsome governess fled by another door just as Mrs. Fitzgerald entered, a sombre object in the long, trailing black robes of widowhood. She bowed to him with a sort of cold expectancy. Calling all his native effrontery to his aid, he rose, and said, theatrically: "Mrs. Fitzgerald, I have come to plead with you to sanction my engagement to your daughter, Geraldine. We love each other devotedly, and it would break our loving hearts to be separated. You may think, perhaps, that I am no mate for your daughter, because you are rich; but that is a great mistake. I am an actor, I own, but I am paid a magnificent salary. My mother is very rich, and makes me a handsome allowance. At her death--and she cannot live much longer, being quite old and frail--I shall inherit her large fortune and can support my wife in grand style." CHAPTER XXXIV. ENEMIES AT BAY. "Punishment o'ertakes the transgression, In time; Fate compels a full confession, In time. None can safely sin forever-- Conscience leaves the bosom never-- It will crush guilt's best endeavor, In time." FRANCIS S. SMITH. Clifford Standish paused to note the effect of his boasting on Mrs. Fitzgerald. Every statement he had made was a falsehood, but he knew that she could not disprove a single one. The magnificent salary of which he boasted was only fifty dollars a week, and as for his rich mother who made him such a handsome allowance, and would leave him a fortune when she died, the old woman was as poor as poverty itself, and took in washing. But as she lived away off in Colorado, he was not afraid that she would ever appear to contradict his statement. In fact, he had told the same story to every new acquaintance, until he had almost come to believe it himself. He judged that Mrs. Fitzgerald was proud and arrogant, and would prefer her daughter to marry rich; so, after telling his boastful story, he waited with some confidence for her reply. She drew herself erect to her stateliest height, and if scorn could have killed, the lightnings of her dark eyes would have stretched him dead at her aristocratic feet. "You contemptible villain!" she exclaimed, angrily. "Madame!" "You perjured wretch! You cowardly wife-deserter! You escaped criminal! You persecutor of innocence! You--you--fiend!" concluded Mrs. Fitzgerald, losing her temper in her righteous indignation and piling opprobrious epithets one upon another in the white heat of her wrath. Startled, cowed by this most unexpected onslaught, the wretch could only cower in pallid amazement before the lady as she continued her scathing denunciation.