He had imagined it from her words the night before. But now, unwittingly, she had made it plain. What Kneedrock had told Carleigh was true.
Nina was his wife—the wife of his youth—and her marriage with Colonel Darling had been bigamy, committed in ignorance of the truth.
Lord Kneedrock stood motionless and silent. Again his eyes—those eyes so strangely changed—were bent upon the rug at his feet.
And the woman went on: "Just for a year, Hal. That's all. And if I'm not a good wife—if I look aside even a hair's breadth—you may kill me, or I'll kill myself when you give the word."
Then the man before the fireplace seemed to rouse himself out of a dream. There was no question that her entreaty had held him. It had indeed touched the depths of him.
In his mentally dulled state, such a culmination as she begged for had seemed not only desirable, but possible.
But now, all at once, there had floated back a memory of another face and another voice—a face and a voice too recently seen and heard to be quite clouded and hushed by the present.
Figuratively he shook himself, drew his hands from his pockets, lifted his tawny head, and turned upon her his unfamiliar eyes.
"Very, very pretty," he sneered cruelly. "But it's too late. I've another love—all my own, too, and not tarnished and worn thin by general use. You're no wife of mine—remember that—you sacrificed all claim. Besides, you're—you're—"
The blood was pounding in his neck, and he paused to jerk at his collar in an effort to free his throat.