"Do not touch me, wretch!" she cries. "How dared you bring me here, away from my home and friends? You shall suffer for this."
But the woman only smiles as if at the ravings of a spoiled child.
"My lady, you are mistaken," she answers, not unkindly. "It was your husband who brought you here. I am only your maid. I am here to wait upon you."
"I have no husband," Lady Vera answers, with a cold thrill of fear creeping around her heart.
"Oh, my lady, don't go for to say that," the woman answers, cajolingly. "Such a kind, handsome man as Mr. Noble is ought not to be denied by his wife. I'm sure it was very good in him to carry you off, and hide you from the people as wanted to put you into a lunatic asylum. The keepers would have abused you dreadfully, my poor dear, but I shall be as kind and patient with you as your own mother. Your husband is that tender-hearted he couldn't bear to see you ill-used."
"So it is Leslie Noble who has abducted me," Lady Vera thinks to herself, with a start. Up to that moment her suspicions had turned upon Marcia Cleveland. "The wretch! And he has pretended to this woman that I am crazy."
The crimson color flies into the captive's face, then retreats, leaving her deathly pale again. She rises and walks up to the woman, who retreats half-fearfully before her.
"You need not fear me," Lady Vera tells her, sadly. "I have no intention of harming you. I only wish to ask you a simple question."
Thus adjured, the woman waits respectfully, humoring the whim of her mistress.
"Look at me," says Lady Vera, lifting the dark fringe of her brilliant, star-like eyes, and fixing a calm, steady gaze on the woman's face. "Do I look like a mad person? You know that lunatics have a wild, dangerous glare in their eyes. Are not mine calm, reasonable, steady?"