"Forgiveness!" she echoed, wildly. "Neither God nor man could forgive you, Leon Vinton! You have committed an unpardonable sin. You have broken my heart, you have tried to kill my soul, you murdered me! Can I ever forgive _this_?" She swept back the golden waves of hair that shaded her white brow and showed him the livid scar of a deep wound beneath them. "It is your hellish work!" she said. "You ground your cruel boot-heel into the brow your false lips had kissed a thousand times; you strangled my life out with the hands that had caressed me uncounted times! Oh, my God, can I ever forgive or forget my wrongs?" "I will kill you the next time more surely, curse you!" he hissed, in ungovernable rage, and striding forward, he caught her white arm rudely, almost crushing it in his iron grasp. "Cease, girl, not another word!" She wrenched herself out of his grasp and answered, defiantly: "Let me go, then, if you cannot bear my reproaches. Let me return to my husband." A sneer curled his thin lips as she spoke with an unconscious accent of tenderness on the words "my husband." "Your husband, as you call him, shall never know that you are not mouldering yonder in Rose Hill Cemetery. You shall never look upon his face again, Queenie Lyle." "Mrs. Ernscliffe, if you please," she said, drawing her graceful form erect with a defiant dignity. "Mrs. Ernscliffe, then, if it pleases you better," he answered, mockingly. "Though why you care for the name I do not know. You do not love the man." "I _do_ love him," she answered, firmly, her fair head slightly drooped, and a burning blush crimsoning her cheeks. "Since when?" he queried, sneeringly. "You did not love him when he asked you to marry him. I heard you tell him so." "You heard me!" she exclaimed, in surprise. "Yes, I was a witness to that moonlight wooing. I have seldom lost sight of you since you returned to your father's house, and resumed the _role_ of innocent maidenhood." "A spy!" she said, scornfully. "Yes, if you put it so," he answered, coolly. "We need not be particular about terms." She looked at him as if he were something wonderful. The effrontery of his wickedness almost paralyzed her. She clasped her hands and lifted her blue eyes. "Oh, just Heaven," she said, "why does thy vengeance tarry in smiting this monster?" "Permit me to commend your dramatic ability," he said, with a mock-courtly bow. "Your tones and gestures would make your fortune on the tragic stage." She sank into a chair and dropped her face into her hands. She was very weary and physically exhausted, having eaten nothing since the day of her supposed death, but she felt no hunger now, though she was faint and thirsty. "Your tirade appears to be over," he remarked, with his evil sneer. She looked up. "Tell me one thing," she said, trying to speak calmly. "What do you want of me? Why did you care to get me back, when we both hate each other?"