ere is an end of the matter."

"Then you mean I must give it up?"

"Yes, and a very good thing too, for the ridiculous arrangement that
you have entered into with Philip would have half-ruined you, and you
would be tired of the girl in a month."

"Now, look you here, Anne," said George, in a sort of hiss, and
standing over her in a threatening attitude, "I have suspected for
some time that you were playing me false in this business, and now I
am sure of it. You have put the girl up to treating me like this, you
treacherous snake; you have struck me from behind, you Red Indian in
petticoats. But, look here, I will be square with you; you shall not
have all the laugh on your side."

"George, you must be mad."

"You shall see whether I am mad or not. Did you see what the brigands
did to a fellow they caught in Greece the other day for whom they
wanted ransom? First, they sent his ear to his friends, then his nose,
then his foot, and, last of all, his head--all by post, mark you.
Well, dear Anne, that is just how I am going to pay you out. You shall
have a week to find a fresh plan to trap the bird you have frightened,
and, if you find none, first, I shall post one of those interesting
letters that I have yonder to your husband--anonymously, you know--not
a very compromising one, but one that will pique his curiosity and set
him making inquiries; then I shall wait another week."

Lady Bellamy could bear it no longer. She sprang up from her chair,
pale with anger.

"You fiend in human form, what is it, I wonder, that has kept me so
long from destroying you and myself too? Oh! you need not laugh; I
have the means to do it, if I choose: I have had them for twenty
years."

George laughed again, hoarsely.

"Quite penny-dreadful, I declare. But I don't think you will come to
that; you would be afraid, and, if you do, I don't much care--I am
pretty reckless, I can tell you."

"For your threats," she went on, without heeding him, "I care nothing,
for, as I tell you, I have their antidote at hand. You have known me
for many years, tell me, did you ever see my nerve desert me? Do you
suppose that I am a woman who would bear failure when I could choose
death? No, George, I had rather pass into eternity on the crest of the
wave of my success, such as it has been, and let it break and grind me
to powder there, or else bear me to greater heights. All that should
have been a woman's better part in the world you have destroyed