Are they so infamous that even
you shrink from telling me? In a word, what do you want?"

"'In a word,' then: I want--Odalite," coolly replied the colonel.

The lady gazed at the man with eyes slowly dilating with horror.

"Odalite!" she gasped, under her breath.

"Yes, if you please. I hear that the girl is considered marriageable. I
hear also a rumor to the effect that she may possibly be married to that
young midshipman who is expected home at Christmas--unless I supplant him,
which I hope to do, for she cannot care for him really, you know, since
they parted when they were boy and child."

"But she does care for him. She loves him as he loves her. They have
always been devoted to each other," indignantly retorted Elfrida Force.

The colonel laughed insolently.

"Boy and girl love! Puppy love! Pigeon love! We will soon change all
that."

"If she did not care at all for Leonidas Force, still I know it is utterly
impossible she should ever care for you."

"I would make her love me--or pretend to do so."

"Even if she were to become so deranged in mind, so demoralized in heart
as to love you, I should never consent to such a monstrous marriage!"
passionately declared Elfrida Force.

"Oh, yes you would! You will, when you realize that unless you do, your
family peace and honor, your social position and prosperity--all you prize
and pride yourself upon--must suddenly fall and bury you and yours under
their ruins. Are you prepared to meet such a catastrophe? Indeed, to pull
down destruction upon yourself, your husband, your daughters--all whom you
love and cherish? Are you prepared to see your name blazoned all over the
world as the subject of an unexampled scandal in high life? Are you
prepared to see your husband and daughters--die of----Who can foresee
their fate? Are you willing that this discovery should wreck and destroy
your home and your family, root and branch, and leave nothing of you but
the memory of one dishonored name behind? Are you ready to incur all this
irremediable woe and ruin? For be sure that in refusing me your daughter's
hand, you do incur it."

"Do you think, reckless knave as you are! do you think, even if I were so
lost to every sense of honor and decency as to wish to sacrifice my dear
daughter, that she would ever be persuaded to become your wife?" said the
lady, and her voice sounded hollow from the depths of her distress.

"Oh, yes! certainly! when she hears, as she must hear, i