"But you shall believe me! If that woman is lost, if she has gone mad, for she was mad, when I left her in the graveyard, if she has wandered off and perished, or worse still——"
"Hold, hold!" cried Mellen, shuddering.
"If she is lost or dead," continued North, without heeding the anguish in this cry, "you have murdered the sweetest and noblest woman that ever drew breath, and only that the worthless thing lying yonder, should continue to be pampered and sit above her."
Mellen started to his feet.
"Silence!" he thundered. "Do not dare to take the name of that innocent child into your lips."
A keen, sarcastic laugh, preceded the answer North gave to this.
"So that strikes home, does it? Your wife has probably died by her own hand, but you do not feel it. When that paltry thing is mentioned, you tear at the bit and begin to rave, as if she were the most worthy creature on earth. Ah, ha! There you are wounded, my friend."
Mellen remembered Elsie's presence.
"Well," he cried, pointing to her, "that woman only had my heart; my blood did not run in her veins; if you had struck me there the blow would have been keener."
The man laughed again; Elsie heard both words and laugh, as she lay in that marble trance. Had she been laid out shrouded for burial she could not have been more helpless.