"I can give you no reason; for, although one exists, I am too great a coward to confess it. I can only throw myself on your pity and your mercy, Lord Clive."
"But you are not showing me any mercy or pity," he replied, in a deeply offended tone.
"Am I not, Lord Clive? Then I will show no mercy to myself. Listen, then: I am an arrant coquette. When I accepted your offer I knew quite well that I could never marry you. But it was to pique another, whom I cared for, into a confession of his love that I played with your heart. There; have I lowered myself sufficiently in your eyes?"
The handsome nobleman arose, pale with passion.
"You have made me quite willing to relinquish all claims upon you, Miss Brooke," he said, with haughty sarcasm, adding, still more bitterly: "I trust your clever ruse brought him to your feet."
"Ah, no, no!" she cried, in a broken voice; but at that moment the door opened, admitting Lord and Lady Ivon and some visitors—Mrs. Meredith, her two daughters, and Jewel Fielding.
Azalia rose quietly and greeted the visitors, trembling when the hateful glance of Jewel met her own.
"She is regretting that I was not killed by the dynamite bomb she left in my room," she thought, nervously. "Ah, with what a deadly hatred she regards me! She will never relax in her deadly purpose until I am dead and out of her way."
Mrs. Meredith came and sat down by her side, almost furtively, in her fear of offending jealous Jewel.