ck
with a sudden icy blast, and cried out with fear.

Then said a voice: "So! you seek the Devil's aid to rid you of me."

At once she knew that she was in the presence of her husband, but
so dazzled was she that she could not discern him.

His fingers closed on her arm, as though each were an iron screw.

"So!" said he, in a low tone, his voice quivering with rage, "like
Karon Wyeth, you ask the Devil to break my neck."

"No," gasped Mehetabel.

"Yes, Matabel. I heard you. 'Save me from him. Take him away.'"

"No--no--Jonas."

She could not speak more in her alarm and confusion.

"Take him away. Snap his spine--send a bullet through his skull;
cast him into Pug's mere and drown him; do what you will, only
rid me of Bideabout Kink, whom I swore to love, honor, and to obey."

He spoke with bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated,
with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas
entertained some ancestral superstitions--and belief in the
efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's Stone was one.

"No, Jonas, no. I did not ask it."

"I heard you."

"Not you."

"What," sneered he; "are not these ears mine?"

"I mean--I did not ask to have you taken away."

"Then whom?"

She was silent. She trembled. She could not answer his question.

If her husband had been at all other than he was, Mehetabel would
have taken him into her confidence. But there are certain persons
to whom to commit a confidence is to expose yourself to insult and
outrage. Mehetabel knew this. Such a confidence as she would have
given would be turned by him into a means of torture and humiliation.

"Now listen to me," said Jonas, in quivering tones of a voice that
was suppressed. "I know all now. I did not. I trusted you. I was
perhaps a fool. I believed in you. But Sarah has told me all--how
he--that painting ape--has been at my house, meeting you, befooling
you, pouring his love-tales into your ears, and watching till my
back was turned to kiss you."

She was unable to speak. Her knees smote together.

"You cannot answer," he continued. "You are unable to deny that it
was so. Sarah has kept an eye on you both. She should have spoken
before. I am sorry she did not. But better late than never. You
encouraged him to come to you. You drew him to the house."

"No, Jonas, no. It was you who invited him."

"Ah! for me he would not come. Little he cared for my society. The
picture-making was but an excuse, and yo