ng sharply through the room.

"Yes, she believes so; it was so announced in one of the American
papers," Lord Cameron replied, with something more of composure, but
never losing that first look of horror.

Like a flash Wallace wheeled about and faced Wilhelm Mencke and his
trembling wife.

"Then that was some more of your miserable work!" he cried, in a
terrible voice, "a diabolical plot to separate us. From the first you
have left nothing undone to part us, and so, when all else failed, you
reported me dead, knowing well that she would never marry another while
she believed me to be living. Oh! I see it all now, and my love, my
love, I have wronged you!" he concluded, in a tone of anguish.

When he had turned with such fiery denunciation upon them, Mrs. Mencke
shrank from him with such an expression of awe, fear, and guilt upon her
face, that she was instantly self-condemned; every one in the room was
as sure that she had caused that lying paragraph, announcing Wallace's
death, to be inserted in the paper to mislead Violet, as if she had
openly confessed it.

"Did you do it--did you drive that poor child thus to promise to become
my wife?" demanded Lord Cameron, in a voice that was like the ominous
calm before a tempest.

The woman was speechless; but her guilty eyes drooped beneath his stern
look, for she knew that her miserable secret was revealed.

"You do not know what you have done," Wallace cried, growing wild again,
"but you will pay dearly for your treachery--ha! ha! you little dream
how dearly it will cost you, when the consequences of your wretched plot
shall be noised abroad from the aristocratic summit upon which you have
hitherto so proudly stood, and from which you will soon be ruthlessly
hurled."

Wilhelm Mencke, having by this time begun to recover somewhat from the
shock of Wallace's unexpected appearance, commenced to bluster:

"Look here, you young upstart," he cried, growing very red in the face,
and assuming a threatening attitude, "all these charges and accusations
may or may not be true--we won't discuss that point just now; but
whether it is or not, it can be no possible concern of yours. I should
like to know what you mean by bursting in upon respectable people in
this rude way. What was Violet to you?--what right or business have you
to interfere with whatever she might have chosen to do?"

"The most sacred right in the world, sir, for--she is my wife!"

CHAPTER XVI.

"I M