"I must go on," he said. "It is true. Margaret Hale is alive. Do you doubt me? Look in my face," and he drew a step nearer.
She looked at him with all her anguished soul in her eyes, then she shrank back.
"She is here, here in Naples. An hour hence, any moment, they may meet, Blair and she, and he will recognize her. Do you think that, after that, you have much chance of remaining as the wife of the Earl of Ferrers? You know best whether his heart has forgotten his allegiance to his first wife, his real wife, his present wife; for you are nothing whatever to him, remember. You are not the Countess of Ferrers, but simply—Miss Violet Graham!"
She sat staring at him, her hand clinched on the certificate.
"Why—why did she leave him? Does he know that she is alive?" she said hoarsely.
He laughed, and drawing a chair nearer, sat astride it and facing her.
"No, he thinks her dead," he said. "I see, you will not be satisfied until I tell you the whole of my little plot! Listen, then," and with his eyes fixed upon her watchingly, he told the story of the elaborate scheme which, helped by Fate, he had built up; of Lottie Belvoir's deception, and of Margaret's supposed death.
"And you did all this? You—you must be more devil than man!"
He smiled.