rned white as death and her heart throbbing violently, she
stared helplessly at her persecutor. She tried to be calm, but she
could not. Yet, why be so alarmed, why should this single question so
agitate her? In the deepest recesses of her being she knew that it was
her unerring instinct warning her that she was about to hear something
that would entail worse suffering than any she had yet endured.

"Yes--yes--why do you ask?" she gasped.

"You all thought the brother dead."

"Yes."

"You were mistaken. He is alive."

"Where is he?" she faltered.

"Here in New York."

"Where?"

"In your house. The man who returned home was not your husband. He
was your husband's twin brother."

She looked at him as one bewildered, as if she did not understand what
he was saying, as if words had suddenly lost their meaning. Her face,
white as in death, she faltered:

"Not Kenneth--then where is Kenneth?"

"He is dead!"

Her powers of speech paralyzed, her large eyes starting from their
sockets from terror, an expression of mute helpless agony on her
beautiful face, she looked up at him with horror. Not yet could she
fully grasp the meaning of his words. At last the frightful spell was
broken. With an effort the words came:

"Then you," she cried. "You are his assassin!"

He shook his head as he replied carelessly:

"No--not I--his brother!"

She gave a cry of anguish and, starting to her feet, made a movement
forward, her hands clutching convulsively at her throat. Air! air!
She must have air. She felt sick and dizzy. The room was spinning
round like a top, and then everything grew dark. Lurching heavily
forward she would have fallen had he not caught her.

Instantly she shrank from the contact as from something unclean, and
with a low moan sank down on a chair and buried her face in her hands.
Her instinct had told her true. Her loved one was dead, she would
never see him again, and that man who had come into the sanctity of her
home and fondled her in his arms was his murderer. Oh, it was too
horrible!

The bitter, cynical smile was still on Keralio's lips as he went on:

"You see the folly of resisting me. Had you surrendered at that time
all might have been well. The price was not too much to pay. I would
have been discreet. No one but ourselves would have known that you and
I were----"

He did not complete the sentence, for at that moment she sprang forward
like an enraged tiger cat,