"Be calm, Queenie," he said, "and listen to me. There can be no question of cannot between you and me! You have deceived us all and spent a year away from us. You return to us wretched and alone, with the marks of cruel violence upon your person. What are we to think of you, Queenie, if you refuse to explain the mystery? How can we receive you back with a secret, perhaps a shameful one, in your life? I must have your vindication from your own lips, my poor child. Answer me, Queenie, where have you spent this missing year of your life?"
She wrenched her hands away and looked about her wildly.
"Let me go—I cannot stay here! Oh! why did I ever come?" she wailed. "I was mad, mad!"
He laid her forcibly back upon the bed. She was too weak to resist him, and lay panting and moaning in wild despair.
"Queenie, you torture me," he said, hoarsely; "I must have the truth from you. Tell me, dear, has anyone wronged you? If it is so, I will have the villain's heart's blood!"
She shivered and trembled where she lay held down by his strong hands.
"Too late," she moaned, in a voice half-triumphant, half-despairing. "I have taken vengeance into my own hands—I have," she broke off shivering and sobbing, with a look of awful horror in the white face with the terrible, purple print of a boot-heel on the marble brow.
"Tell me all, dear," he said, his voice sharp with anxiety and foreboding.
She looked up, trembling and shivering, and wailed out:
"Papa, be merciful—spare me, spare me!"