The sight of her humility and patience ought to have melted the hardest heart, but Granny Jenks was implacable. She only saw in the lovely creature a rival to Roma, and an impediment that must be swept from her path.
Most exciting had been the interview that day between granny and her real granddaughter, and they had mutually agreed that Liane's continued life was a menace not to be borne longer. The beautiful, injured girl must die to insure Roma's continuance in her position.
When Roma left the house a devilish plot had been laid, whose barest details almost had been worked out, and the beautiful schemer's heart throbbed with triumph as she swept out to her carriage.
She had not noticed, on entering the house, a dark, scowling face at the parlor window, neither did she guess that, while she was with granny, the new boarder went out and slipped into the carriage, unobserved by the driver, calmly remaining there and awaiting her return.
When she entered the carriage and seated herself, looking up the next moment to find herself opposite Carlos Cisneros, she opened her lips to shriek aloud, but his hand closed firmly over her lips, and his hoarse voice muttered in her ear:
"Scream, and your wicked life shall end with a bullet in your heart, adventuress, false wife, murderess!"
The driver, unaware of his double fare, whipped up his horses and drove on, while the strange pair glared fiercely at each other, the man hissing savagely:
"I don't know how I keep my hands from your fair white throat, murderess, unless I am lenient because I remember burning kisses you once gave me before your false nature turned from me, and you fled from the school, where you had wedded the poor language teacher secretly while I lay ill of a fever. Cruel heart, to desert me while I was supposed to be dying!"
"A pity you had not died!" she muttered viciously between her red lips, and he snarled:
"It is not your fault that I am living! When I found you, after long, weary search, at Cliffdene, that night, and you toppled me so madly over the cliff, I am sure you meant to kill me!"