-you--have
married me because you have believed me my father's heiress, and--"

"You couldn't help but be, my dear," he hiccoughed. "An only child--no
one else on earth to come in for his gold--couldn't help but be his
heiress, you know--couldn't disinherit you if he wanted to. You've got
the old chap foul enough there, ha, ha, ha!"

"You seem to have suddenly lost sight of the fact that there is some one
beside myself--my stepmother and her daughter Claire."

He fell back a step and looked at her with dilated eyes--despite the
brandy he had imbibed he still understood thoroughly every word she was
saying.

"A stepmother--and--another daughter!" he cried, in astonishment--almost
incoherently.

"You seem to forget that you always used to say to me--that you hoped
they were well," said Faynie with deepening scorn in her clear, young
voice.

"Oh--ah--yes," he muttered, "but you see I was not thinking of
them---only of you," and deep in his heart he was cursing the hapless
cousin--whom he believed dead by this time--for not mentioning that the
girl had a stepmother and sister.

"Had you taken the time to listen to something else that I had to tell
you, you might have reconsidered the advisability of eloping with me in
such haste," went on the girl in her clear, ringing tones, "for it has
become apparent to me--with even as little knowledge of the world as I
possess--that you are a fortune hunter--that most despicable of all
creatures--but in this instance your dastardly scheme has entangled your
own feet. Your well-aimed arrow has missed the mark. You have wedded
this night a penniless girl. An hour before you met me at the arched
gate my father disinherited me, and when he has once made up his mind
upon any course of action--nothing human, nothing on earth or in heaven
would have power enough to induce him to change it."

The effect of her words were magical upon him. With a bound he was at
her side grasping her slender wrists with so tight a hold that they
nearly snapped asunder.

Intense as the pain was, Faynie would not cry aloud. He should not see
that he had power to hurt her, even though she dropped dead at his feet
at last from the excruciating torture of it.

"What is it you say--the old rascal has--disinherited you?" he cried,
scarcely crediting the evidence of his own ears.

"That is just what I said--my father has disinherited me," she replied
slowly and distinctly, adding: "His money was his own--