"Hush!" I exclaimed, bounding from my seat and seizing her upraised arm; for her vivid figure seemed to emit a flame like death. "Hush! we want no tirades, you nor I; only let me hear what Dwight Pollard has done, and whether you knew what you were saying when you called him and his family--" "Murderers!" she completed. I shook, but bowed my head. She loosed her arm from my grasp and stood for one moment contemplating me. "You are a powerful rival," she murmured. "He will love you just six months longer than he did me." I summoned up at once my pride and my composure. "And that would be just six months too long," I averred, "if he is what you declare him to be." "What?" came from between her set teeth, and she gave a spring that brought her close to my side. "You would hate him, if I proved to you that he and his brother and his mother were the planners, if not the executors, of Mr. Barrows' death." "Hate him?" I repeated, recoiling, all my womanhood up in arms before the fearful joy expressed in her voice and attitude. "I should try and forget such a man ever existed. But I shall not be easily convinced," I continued, as I saw her lips open with a sort of eager hope terrible to witness. "You are too anxious to kill my love." "Oh, you will be convinced," she asserted. "Ask Dwight Pollard what sort of garments those are which lie under the boards of the old mill, and see if he can answer you without trembling." "Garments?" I repeated, in astonishment; "garments?" "Yes," said she. "If he can hear you ask that question and not turn pale, stop me in my mad assertions, and fear his doom no more. But if he flinches--" A frightful smile closed up the gap, and she seemed by a look to motion me towards the door. "But is that all you are going to tell me?" I queried, dismayed at the prospect of our interview terminating thus. "Is it not enough?" she asked. "When you have seen _him_, I will see _you_ again. Can you not wait for that hour?" I might have answered No. I was tempted to do so, as I had been tempted more than once to exert the full force of my spirit and crush her. But I had an indomitable pride of my own, and did not wish to risk even the semblance of defeat. So I controlled myself and merely replied: "I do not desire to see Dwight Pollard again. I am not intending to return to his house." "And yet you will see him," she averred. "I can easily be patient till then." And she cast another look of dismissal towards the door. "You are a demon!" I felt tempted to respond, but my own dignity restrained me as well as her beauty, which was something absolutely dazzling in its intensity and fire. "I will have the truth from you yet," was what I did say, as I moved, heart-sick and desponding, from her side. And her slow "No doubt," seemed to fill up the silence like a knell, and give to my homeward journey a terror and a pang which proved that however I had deceived myself, hope had not quite given up its secret hold upon my heart.