The earl breathed hard, and would have leaped in like a lion to the rescue of his betrothed and to the confusion of his enemies, but Sir Harold Wynde held him back with a grasp of iron. The baronet meant to learn the falseness and perfidy of the wife he had so idolized and trusted, from her own lips.
And with what unconscious frankness she bared her guilty soul to his scrutiny. How completely she revealed her wickedness to him.
At the moment the intruders looked in with burning eyes upon them, Octavia was speaking. Neva stood up near the fire, very pale and slender and fragile of figure, as her father and lover saw with swelling hearts, but her red-brown eyes glowed with the light of an undying courage, her head was poised haughtily upon her slender throat, and her lips were curled in a smile of dauntless defiance.
“You see, Craven,” Octavia was saying querulously. “We have starved the girl; we have fed her for weeks on bread and water, until her bodily strength must be nearly gone, and yet she stands there and defies us. What are we to do with her?”
“Miss Wynde does not sufficiently realize her own helplessness and our power,” said Craven Black. “Your friends think you traveling with us upon the Continent, Miss Neva. I have posted to-day a letter apparently in your handwriting, under cover to a friend in Brussels, who will post it back to England. That letter is addressed to Lord Towyn. How he will kiss and caress it, and wear it in his bosom, never doubting that you wrote it. I shall send him another letter next week, in your name, breaking your engagement with him.”
The young earl made a slight movement but Sir Harold held him still in a grip of iron.
Neva’s pure, proud face flushed with scorn [for] her enemies.
“You may send as many letters as you please to Lord Towyn,” she said haughtily, “but you will not deceive him so readily as you did me with that letter purporting to come from papa. Oh, Octavia, I am glad papa never lived to know you as you are, base, treacherous, and full of double-dealing! It is well for him that he did not live, for you would have broken his noble heart. He loved and trusted you, and you have repaid him by oppressing his daughter whom he loved.”
The hard, haggard features of Octavia distorted themselves in a sneer.
The baronet wondered with a sudden horror if this was the woman he had loved. She looked a very Medusa to him now.