ng them here."

"I am not accustomed, my lord, to this treatment."

Lord Atherton's face flushed, his eyes seemed to flame fire.

"Not a word; bring them to me! You have traded for the last time upon a
woman's weakness and fears. I will read the letters, then I will tell
you what I think of you."

"Better tell your wife," sneered the other, "what you think of her."

"My wife is a lady," was the quiet reply--"a lady for whom I have the
greatest honor, respect and esteem. Your lips simply sully her name, and
I refuse to hear it from you."

"She did not always think so," was the sullen reply. "If you had not
stepped in and robbed me, she would have been my wife now."

The white anger of that face, and the convulsive movement of the hand
that held the heavy whip, might have warned him.

"I want those letters," repeated Lord Atherton; "bring them to me at
once. Remember, they are useless to you; you will never force one mere
farthing from Lady Atherton--your keeping them will be useless."

"It will be more to my interest to keep them," sneered Allan Lyster;
"they are interesting documents, and I can show them to those who will
not judge the matter in so onesided a manner as your lordship."

"You may publish them, if you please," said Lord Atherton, "but I will
take care that every line in them brands you with red hot shame. You
shall publish them, and I will make all England ring with the story of
your infamy. I will make every honest man loathe you."

"You cannot," said Allan Lyster.

"I can. Englishmen like fair play. I will tell all England how you took
advantage of a girl's youth and inexperience, above all, of the fact of
her being an orphan, to beguile her into making you a promise of
marriage, and how since you have traded, you coward, on her weakness, on
her love for her husband, on the best part of her nature; and I will
tell my story so honestly, so well, that every honest man shall hate
you. You may have frightened my poor wife with shadows, you cannot so
frighten me. I tell you, and I am speaking truthfully, that I do not
care if you print her letters and every man, woman and child read them;
they shall read my vindication of her and my denunciation of you."

"You see, Lord Atherton, she did promise to marry me, and I did reckon
upon her fortune. What will you give me for the letters?"

"Nothing. If, after reading them, I find you really received, from the
pure and noble lady who is now my wife, a