"And bitterly shall you repent that decree. Do you know what I was doing when I stood up before the clergyman with you?"
"No, sweet wife."
"Well, then, listen. I was vowing and consecrating my whole life to one purpose—one aim; and that is deadly vengeance against you for what you have done. Night and day, sleeping or waking, it shall always occupy my thoughts, and I will live now only for revenge. Ha! I see I can make your saffron visage blanch already, Dr. Wiseman. Oh! you'll find what a happy thing it is to be married. Since I must go down, I shall drag down with me all who have had part or share in this, my misery. You, viper, ghoul that you are, have turned my very nature into that of a fiend. Dr. Wiseman, if I thought, by any monstrous possibility, you could ever go to heaven, I would take a dagger and send my own soul to perdition, sooner than go there with you."
There was something in her words, her tone, her face, perfectly appalling. Her countenance was deadly white, save where the rouge colored it, and her eyes. Oh! never were such wild, burning, gleaming eyes seen in any face before. He cowered from her like the soul-struck coward that he was; and, as with one glance of deadly concentrated hate she glided from his side and mingled with the crowd, he wiped the cold perspiration off his brow, and realized how true were the words oft quoted:
"Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,"
and began to fear that, after all, Mount Sunset was purchased at a dear price.
CHAPTER XXV.
ARCHIE'S LOST LOVE.
"Be it so! we part forever—
Let the past as nothing be;
Had I only loved thee, never
Hadst thou been thus dear to me.