"I think you have mistaken me," she answers, bitterly. "He had no love for me. Ivy Cleveland held his heart. He only married me for pity's sake."
"It may have been pity, then, but it is something deeper now," Colonel Lockhart answers, gravely. "That man means to claim you, Lady Vera. I read it in the glances he cast upon you."
"Claim me!" she repeats, bewildered.
"For his wife," he answers, bitterly, out of the pain of his heart.
She starts to her feet with a little frightened cry, and flies to Lady Clive as if for protection.
"No, no, he would not dare!" she pants, wildly. "I hate and despise him too much to speak to him, even! I defy him to claim me for his wife! I would sooner die than belong to him! And he—oh, he would not wish it! He loved Ivy, you know."
"Do not pin your faith to that fact, Lady Vera," the baronet interposes gravely. "The lady, whom he claims for his wife now is many years older than you; she is faded, simpering, ridiculous. If he ever loved her, she must have made him rue that folly long since. Besides, she is not his real wife, and you are. Do not forget your great attractions, Lady Vera. You are young, beautiful, wealthy and titled. What more natural than that Leslie Noble should be dazzled by your manifold charms, and desire to claim you?"
She regards him with absolute horror in her lovely, white face.
"I would die before I would suffer him to even touch me!" she cries, indignantly.
"Then you must not leave us, Lady Vera," Sir Harry answers, earnestly. "With all the prestige of your rank and wealth you are so utterly alone in the world that my heart yearns for you as if you were my sister or my daughter. Stay with us and let us guard you from the traps your enemies may set for you."