need you!" he cried, as if wrung by pain, and
then hot upon her brow and cheeks and lips his kisses fell, and shame
turned her to fire from head to foot as she fought helplessly within his
crushing grasp.

"You dog!" she panted, and writhing harder, wrenched free a hand and
arm. Blindly she beat upwards into that evil satyr's face. "You beast!
You toad! You coward!"

They fell apart, each panting; she leaning faint against the spinet, her
bosom galloping; he muttering oaths decent and other--for in the upward
thrusting of her little hand one of its fingers had prodded at an
eye, and the pain of it--which had caused him to relax his hold of
her--stripped what little veneer remained upon the man's true nature.

"Will you go?" she asked him furiously, outraged by the vileness of his
ravings. "Will you go, or must I summon help?"

He stood looking at her, straightening his wig, which had become
disarranged in the struggle, and forcing himself to an outward calm.
"So," he said. "You scorn me? You will not marry me? You realise the
chance, eh? And why? Why?"

"I suppose it is because I am blind to the honor of the alliance," she
controlled herself to answer him. "Will you go?"

He did not move. "Yet you loved me once--"

"'Tis a lie!" she blazed. "I thought I did--to my undying shame. No more
than that, my lord--as I've a soul to be saved."

"You loved Me," he insisted. "And you would love me still but for this
damned Caryll--this French coxcomb, who has crawled into your regard
like the slimy, creeping thing he is."

"It sorts well with your ways, my lord, that you could say these things
behind his back. You are practiced at stabbing men behind."

The gibe, with all the hurtful, stinging quality that only truth
possesses, struck his anger from him, leaving him limp and pale. Then he
recovered.

"Do you know who he is--what he is?" he asked. "I will tell you. He's a
spy--a damned Jacobite spy, whom a word from me will hang."

Her eyes lashed him with her scorn. "I were a fool did I believe you,"
was her contemptuous answer.

"Ask him," he said, and laughed. He turned and strode to the door.
Paused there, sardonic, looking back. "I shall be quits with you, ma'am.
Quits! I'll hang this pretty turtle of yours at Tyburn. Tell him so from
me."

He wrenched the door open, and went out on that, leaving her cold and
sick with dread.

Was it but an idle threat to terrorize her? Was it but that? Her impulse
was to s