He heard the clamorous voices crying out that he was mad; but he scorned to avail himself of any loophole of escape, and, still clutching Fair’s trembling form, he turned his head, and, looking into the excited faces around him, said loudly but clearly: “You are mistaken. I am not crazed, but I am an outraged husband, who has taken vengeance into his own hands. This woman is my wife. She fled from me two years ago, and ever since I have carried around with me a bullet for her false heart. Look at her. How guiltily she shrinks! She will not deny that I am her husband.” She looked at him with a face of horror, and shrieked out: “You are my evil genius! You killed my mother, and now you have killed my lover. Oh, may Heaven punish you for your sins!” and with those words her senses reeled, and she slipped from his grasp, unconscious. Pitying hands lifted and bore her away, followed by his jeering threat: “She is my wife, remember, and if any one dares assist her to escape I will make him suffer for it.” “You must consider yourself under arrest,” he was told, and he did not make any resistance when they confined him in a room in his own villa, with two guards to prevent his escape. Every one honestly believed that he was a maniac, that he had suddenly gone mad; and he was mad, but only with jealous rage that his bullet had missed the white breast for which it was meant. “Curse her! I wish the same bullet had gone through both hearts. Then they might have slept in the same grave,” he hissed savagely; but he was mistaken in thinking that he had killed Bayard Lorraine. The bullet had missed his heart and imbedded itself in the fleshy part of his shoulder. The physicians who had been sent for probed the wound and extracted the bullet. They expressed the opinion that it would not result fatally. The patient had recovered consciousness, and bore his pain with the bravery of a hero. He listened eagerly to the physician’s verdict, and then he said anxiously: “Be frank with me. If there is the least doubt, let me know, for much depends upon my knowledge of the truth.” They told him that they could not certainly promise recovery, but there were reasonable grounds for hope. Of course, much depended on his constitution, on careful nursing, et cetera. “Thank you,” he said, and, turning to Augustus Frayne, who stood beside his pillow, he said: “If the minister has not gone, and if Fair and her mother will consent, I should like to have the interrupted ceremony go on, as, in the event of my death, I wish Fair to have all my property.” He had remembered that Fair would be friendless and penniless if Mrs. Howard should die, and he wished to place her at once beyond either possibility.