For one moment, indeed, a jealous pang tore her heart, and she said, pleadingly:
"If your wife is dead, as you say, Clifford, you ought to marry me. You owe it to me, after all I gave up for your sake. You know I trusted in your promises."
"You were a fool for your pains," he replied, with brutal frankness. "You had knowledge enough of the world to be sure that a silly married woman who deserts her husband for another man will surely reap what she has sown."
"You swore you would marry me when Cameron Clemens secured a divorce."
"You were very silly to believe me, Azuba. I was only amusing myself with your credulity. A man never means the vows he makes in an affair of that kind. The time is sure to come when he will meet some pure young girl, and give her the best of his heart. Then he despises the weak victims of his past passions."
"As you despise me?" she demanded, bitterly.
"It would not be polite to say so," he replied, indifferently, and hearing her stifled sob, he added, impatiently: "Bah, Azuba! I have quite got over my old fancy for you, and your sniveling cannot warm over the old coals. I never really loved you—never knew the power of love until I met pretty Geraldine, and the only way for you to get a kind thought from me is to help me to win the little beauty."
Crushed and humiliated by his scorn, she would have defied him if she had dared, but she was in his power, and dared not do it; so, ere they parted, the plot for Geraldine's abduction was made, and nothing remained but to carry it out that night.
"Do not dare to fail me, or the weight of my vengeance will crush you," he said, threateningly, and with a shudder she promised to obey.