"Claudia! Oh, Heaven! You are certainly mad!"
"I know it; but the knowledge does not help me to the cure. I have been mad a month!" Then breaking forth into a wail of woe, she cried: "Oh, Bee! I do not love that man! I do not love him! and the idea of marrying him appalls my very soul!"
"Good Heaven, Claudia, then why—" begun Bee, but Claudia fiercely continued:
"I loathe him! I sicken at him! His first kiss! Oh, Bee! the cold, clammy touch of those lips struck all the color from my face forever, I think! I loathe him!"
"Oh, Claudia, Claudia, why, in the name of all that is wise and good, do you do yourself, and him, too, such a terrible wrong as to marry him?" inquired the deeply-shocked maiden.
"Because I must! Because I will! I have deliberately determined to be a peeress of England, and I will be one, whatever the cost."
"But oh! have you thought of the deadly sin—the treachery, the perjury, the sacrilege; oh! and the dreadful degradation of such a loveless marriage?"
"Have I thought of these things—these horrors? Yes; witness this tortured heart and racked brain of mine!"
"Then why, oh, why, Claudia, do you persevere?"
"I am in the vortex of the whirlpool, and cannot stop myself!"