“I will tell you nothing, you miserable horse-thief, only that I am sorry you are not dead as I believed! Go away and leave me. I have naught to do with such as you!”
“We shall see,” he said. “Come, tell me, what you are doing here; why are you so richly dressed? Did you go back to your father in San Francisco and tell him that the handsome book-agent with whom you eloped turned out to be a horse-thief and a desperado, that you betrayed him to the vigilantes, and had him hanged? Did he forgive your disobedience, commend your treachery, and take you back?”
“Hush!” she whispered, fearfully, glancing about her in the purple twilight. “You will be overheard. Nor—Some one will be coming to look for me.”
“You belong here, then?” hissed Robert Lacy, excitedly. “Perhaps you mean to tell me that you are mistress of Verelands—that you are Mrs. de Vere?”
“Oh! no—no! I do not belong here!” she cried out, wildly; but the valet lifted a heavy hand and struck her in the face.
“Quit your lies, Camille Lacy!” he said, brutally. “You’ve known the weight of that hand in the past, and you’ll feel it again if you don’t shut up! Oh, yes, I know you, Mrs. de Vere,” mockingly, “and I’ll tell you what I mean to do to punish you—you false, heartless wife! I always meant to kill you on sight. I’ve carried a knife for your heart for years, but I won’t use it just yet. I will take you to my heart again. Ha! ha! I’ll show you to Lord Stuart, who sent me here to bring you flowers, as the false wife who brought me to the gallows from which he saved me. And this gentleman—this Mr. de Vere that you’ve married, thinking yourself a widow—I’ll show you to him as a traitoress—a woman who hounded her husband to death!” fiercely.
She lifted her bruised face from her hands and moaned:
“Spare me, for God’s sake! I am rich; I will divide the whole of my fortune with you if you will only go away and leave me in peace.”
“I hate you! I would not forego my sweet revenge for the wealth of a Rothschild or a Vanderbilt,” was the sullen, evilly triumphant reply, and suddenly she flung herself upon him, whether in love or wrath it was so swift he could not determine for a moment. In that fatal moment of indecision Camille’s stealthy hand found the knife in his belt—the knife he meant for her heart. She drew back her hand and struck furiously once—twice—at his breast. The hot blood spurted into her face as she recoiled and flung him from her—flung him so skillfully that his limp form fell into the swollen river and went hurrying away with the blood-stained tide.