"My friends," she cries, with uplifted hands and a face of horror, "surely this beautiful lady has lost her mind. She is stark, staring mad, and for this I can forgive her the insults she has heaped upon my daughter. I believe she is a clever adventuress whom Lawrence Campbell has foisted on the world as his heiress. Vera, the real daughter of the Earl of Fairvale, died three years ago in Washington. She is buried at Glenwood beneath a marble monument that bears her name and age. I swear before God that this is true. This girl here, this pretended Countess of Fairvale, is, without doubt, a clever impostor, who is keeping the Earl's true heir out of his own. Let her disprove this charge if she can. If she be truly Vera Campbell, let her prove that she was resurrected from the grave in Glenwood where my own eyes saw her laid."
A moment of perfect silence follows Mrs. Cleveland's venomous words. Her daughter, who is a coward at heart in spite of all her bravado, has fallen back a pace, allowing her mother to be spokesman, well knowing that not even herself could so valiantly defend her cause.
There is a look of fear and dread on Ivy's face that gives her a ghastly look in spite of her paint and powder.
Lady Vera's words have carried conviction to her heart, and in fancy she sees herself deserted and abandoned by the man whom she believed her husband, and whom she has relentlessly tyrannized over, recklessly dissipating his fortune, and trampling on his heart.
She well knows that every spark of love he ever entertained for her had died long ago, murdered by her own heartless, unloving course toward him. What more natural than that he should rejoice if his bonds fell from him and left him free from her mother and herself, who had been fastened upon him like human vampires, draining his very heart's blood.
She glances at him, and that glance does not reassure her. There is a strange expression on his face, and he is not looking at her, but at the beautiful, high-born girl who has just claimed him as her husband, albeit with words of scorn.
Even while she gazes at him in fear and terror he steps forward with a certain craftiness in his eyes, and answers Mrs. Cleveland's angry words.
"You speak too harshly, perhaps, Mrs. Cleveland. I have been impressed, even against my will, by Lady Fairvale's words. She is certainly possessed of knowledge that no one but Vera Campbell could have known. Then, too, she is startlingly like my dead wife, both in voice and person. Although I certainly buried my first wife and raised a costly monument over her grave, I am still willing to investigate the strange charges of Lady Fairvale. Strange things have happened sometimes. The dead have come to life, the lost have been found. 'Let justice be done though the heavens fall.'"
"Wretch! Would you turn traitor to me?" screams Ivy, clutching him violently by the arm, forgetful of all but her fear of losing him.
He gazes down at her in a feigned sympathy and sorrow.