, too, as he looked and began to realise the
actuality of her presence, found the hatred of her which he had had,
once again surging up in his heart. All the brooding passion of the
past year seemed to find a voice at once as he asked her:

'Why are you here? You're dead and buried.'

'I am here, Wykham Delandre, for no love of you, but because I hate
another even more than I do you!' A great passion blazed in her eyes.

'Him?' he asked, in so fierce a whisper that even the woman was for an
instant startled till she regained her calm.

'Yes, him!' she answered. 'But make no mistake, my revenge is my own;
and I merely use you to help me to it.' Wykham asked suddenly:

'Did he marry you?'

The woman's distorted face broadened out in a ghastly attempt at a
smile. It was a hideous mockery, for the broken features and seamed
scars took strange shapes and strange colours, and queer lines of
white showed out as the straining muscles pressed on the old
cicatrices.

'So you would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that
your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my
revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair's breadth. I
have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that
if any violence be done me where I am going there may be a witness.'

'Where are you going?' demanded her brother.

'That is my affair! and I have not the least intention of letting you
know!' Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and
fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following
his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he
would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of
her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others
beside him that would rue her hair and her beauty too. 'As he will,'
she hissed; 'for the hair remains though the beauty be gone. When he
withdrew the lynch-pin and sent us over the precipice into the
torrent, he had little thought of my beauty. Perhaps his beauty would
be scarred like mine were he whirled, as I was, among the rocks of the
Visp, and frozen on the ice pack in the drift of the river. But let
him beware! His time is coming!' and with a fierce gesture she flung
open the door and passed out into the night.

* * * * *

Later on that night, Mrs. Brent, who was but half-asleep, became
suddenly awake and spoke to her hu