us break off here, sir. I forbid you ever to speak to me
again."

M. Elgin laughed in a terrible way.

"That is your last word?" he asked.

Instead of answering him, she drew a step aside, thus opening the way to
the door, at which she pointed with her finger.

"Well," said Sir Thorn with an accent of fierce threatening, "remember
this; I have sworn you shall be my wife, whether you will or not; and my
wife you shall be!"

"Leave the room, sir, or I must give it up to you!"

He went out swearing; and, more dead than alive, Henrietta sank into
an arm-chair. As long as she had been in the presence of the enemy, her
pride had enabled her to keep up the appearance of absolute faith in
Daniel; but, now she was alone, terrible doubts began to beset her. Was
there not something true in the evident exaggerations of the Hon. M.
Elgin? She was not quite sure. Had not Sarah also boasted of it, that
she loved Daniel, and that she had been in his room? Finally, Henrietta
recalled with a shudder, that, when Daniel had told her of his adventure
in Circus Street, he had appeared embarrassed towards the end, and had
failed fully to explain the reasons of his flight.

And to crown the matter, when she had tried to draw from M. de Brevan
additional information on the subject, she had been struck by his
embarrassment, and the lame and confused way in which he had defended
his friend.

"Ah, now all is really over!" she thought. "The measure of my sufferings
is full indeed!"

Unfortunately it was not yet full. A new persecution awaited her,
infamous, monstrous, by the side of which all the others amounted to
nothing.

"Whether you will, or not, you shall be mine," had Sir Thorn said; and
from that moment he was bent upon convincing her that he was not the man
to shrink from any thing, even unto violence.

He was no longer the sympathetic defender of former days, nor the
timid lover, nor the sighing, rejected lover, who followed Henrietta
everywhere. He was, henceforth, a kind of wild beast, pursuing her,
harassing her, persecuting her, with his eyes glaring at her with
abominable lust. He no longer looked at her furtively, as formerly;
but he lay in wait for her in the passages, ready, apparently, to throw
himself upon her; projecting his lips as if to touch her cheeks, and
extending his arms as if to seize her around her waist. A drunken lackey
pursuing a scullion would not have looked and acted more impudently.

Terrified,