ve. She threw his hand away and said
hoarsely, "Do you--do you mean that you have any claim on me?"

"Who has a better claim?" he asked cunningly. "I loved you when I
married you and I love you now. Do you think I rested a moment after I
was free from the woman I detested? No, indeed; nor did I rest till I
found out who took you from the almshouse to be his household drudge,
not wife. I've seen the justice who aided in the wedding farce, and
learned how this man Holcroft made him cut down even the ceremony of a
civil marriage to one sentence. It was positively heathenish, and he
only took you because he couldn't get a decent servant to live with
him."

"O God!" murmured the stricken woman. "Can such a horrible thing be?"

"So it seems," he resumed, misinterpreting her. "Come now!" he said
confidently, and sitting down, "Don't look so broken up about it. Even
while that woman was living I felt that I was married to you and you
only; now that I'm free--"

"But I'm not free and don't wish to be."

"Don't be foolish, Alida. You know this farmer don't care a rap for
you. Own up now, does he?"

The answer was a low, half-despairing cry.

"There, I knew it was so. What else could you expect? Don't you see
I'm your true refuge and not this hard-hearted, money-grasping farmer?"

"Stop speaking against him!" she cried. "O God!" she wailed, "can the
law give this man any claim on me, now his wife is dead?"

"Yes, and one I mean to enforce," he replied doggedly.

"I don't believe she's dead, I don't believe anything you say! You
deceived me once.

"I'm not deceiving you now, Alida," he said with much solemnity. "She
IS dead. If you were calmer, I have proofs to convince you in these
papers. Here's the newspaper, too, containing the notice of her
death," and he handed it to her.

She read it with her frightened eyes, and then the paper dropped from
her half-paralyzed hands to the floor. She was so unsophisticated, and
her brain was in such a whirl of confusion and terror, that she was led
to believe at the moment that he had a legal claim upon her which he
could enforce.

"Oh, that Mr. Holcroft were here!" she cried desperately. "He wouldn't
deceive me; he never deceived me."

"It is well for him that he isn't here," said Ferguson, assuming a dark
look.

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Come, come, Alida!" he said, smiling reassuringly. "You are frightened
and nervous, and I don't wish to make you