"Lady Fairvale," she answers, "I do not know how you, a stranger, have learned the secrets of my past life, but I will answer your questions fairly and truthfully. Lawrence Campbell did indeed come to me as you assert, but his daughter had been buried that very day in Glenwood. I bade him seek his wife and child in the grave, and he fell down like one dead at my feet. I caused my servants to throw him into the street like a dog, and I know not, to this day, if he be living or dead."
"He is dead," Lady Vera answers, with blazing eyes. "He has been dead almost a year. He lived but for vengeance on you, Marcia Cleveland, and when he died, he bade me swear an oath of vengeance on you. He bade me avenge my martyred mother's bitter wrongs. It is for this I have spoken. Do you think I did not shrink from claiming that craven coward there," pointing a scornful finger, "as my husband?"
Flushing scarlet under her lightning scorn, Leslie Noble advances.
"Lady Fairvale, if indeed you are my wife," he says, "and," insolently, "no man could have a wife more beautiful, will you tell me by what strange chance you were rescued from the grave where I, myself, saw you laid?"
"I deny that I was ever buried," Vera flashes out angrily. "My father told me nothing of that. He declared that he had me carried away from Mrs. Cleveland's in a deep narcotic sleep."
"Is it true that Lawrence Campbell was the Earl of Fairvale?" Mrs. Cleveland demands, looking at Colonel Lockhart.
"It is perfectly true, madam," he answered, coldly.
"And it is true that I am his daughter, whom you and your daughter so shamefully abused and maltreated?" Vera cries. "Do you remember, Ivy Cleveland, how you abused and insulted me? How you struck me in the face that night when my mother lay dead in the house? Do you recall your anger because she had died before the embroidery was finished on your Surah polonaise? Do you remember, Leslie Noble, how you stood by the bedside of that dying saint, and swore to protect and love the unconscious child you married! Ah, well you kept your vow when you plotted with that wicked woman yonder to send me from you to a convent school where I should be tortured to death, so that you should go free. That was her wicked scheme, I know, for she had planned to marry you to Ivy. Now you know why I tried to escape from you into the merciful land of death. But Heaven spared me the commission of that sin. It was not poison I took. I made a mistake in the drug. I lived to drag you down to the dust, Marcia Cleveland; to punish you through your daughter's shame for my parents' wrongs and mine! You understand now why I would not speak to you, Ivy Cleveland! That man there whom I utterly loathe and despise, is my husband, although I would not bear his name for wealth untold. You are a false and sinful woman unfit to mate with the pure and true, knowing yourself to be only the reputed wife of a bigamist!"
The torrent of passionate accusation comes to a sudden end, and Lady Vera, with heaving breast and dilated eyes, looks contempt upon her foes. They stand before her awed and silent for a moment. Her scathing words have carried conviction to their hearts. They know her in truth to be that Vera whom for three long years they have believed to be sleeping under the costly marble that bears her name in Glenwood Cemetery. But they will never admit it. To do that would be to throw up the game and own themselves beaten and vanquished.
A curious crowd of ladies and gentlemen have gathered around attracted by the sound of excited voices. With wonder and dismay they listen to the scathing denunciations that fall from the lips of the beautiful countess. Mrs. Cleveland, fully conscious of the curious eyes, turns around and makes reply to them—not Lady Vera.