Setting him on his feet again, the stranger passed quickly up the porch steps and stood before Serena. She glanced up into his bearded face in surprised inquiry, sprang to her feet, and stepped back a pace or two, her heart beating wildly, the color suffusing her face, then suddenly retreating, and leaving it of a death-like pallor.
“Don’t you know me?” he asked, with a slightly scornful curl of the lip.
“Yes,” she answered, slowly, her voice trembling with agitation; “it’s—George Golding, the brother of my former husband, Perry’s father.”
“No; it’s not George, but Perry himself. I’m your husband, Serena, and you’re my wife. My claim is stronger than Jasper’s, and he’ll have to give you up to me.”
A look of anguish swept over her wan face, and she clutched at a chair-back for support.
“It isn’t true,” she said, hoarsely; “it can’t be true, for Perry Golding died three years ago. I went to the hospital to nurse him, but he was dead before I got there; they told me so, and they showed me his grave and gave me his clothes.”
“’Twas all a lie, then,” he asserted, “for here I am, alive and well, and I’ve come for my wife, and intend to have her, too—her and my son.”
“I’ll not go with you!” she cried, the color returning to her cheek and her eyes flashing with anger. “I tell you my former husband is dead, and you—you are an impostor!”
“Am I?” he said, coolly, helping himself to a chair. “Sit down and listen to what I have to say in proof of my identity.”
She dropped into her seat again, and he went on to speak of some things known only to him and herself. He succeeded in convincing her; she knew and acknowledged that he was the husband she had so long believed to be in his grave, so long ceased to mourn, but it was with bitter sobs and tears that she did so; she drew herself away when he would have embraced her, and bade him leave her—at least for the present.