"Now I know it was you that sent me the flowers," she said. "Why did you do it? They were poisoned!"
"No, only drugged! It was a subtle drug I bought in the east long ago—a drug warranted to produce a long and sudden sleep perfectly resembling death."
"Again I ask you, why did you do it?" she said, and her voice was full of wonder.
"I wanted to get you into my power once more. That was the safest plan to effect it. I let them bury you, and then I resurrected you."
"What did you want of me? You wearied of me before. Why not have let me go in peace?"
She tried to speak calmly, but her voice trembled with some inward resentment, and there was a passion of hatred in her dusky eyes that might have killed him where he stood. A rage as deadly as hers leaped up in his eyes in answer.
"Because I hate you!" he said, wickedly.
"We always hate those whom we have wronged," she replied, and her whole form trembled with her passionate indignation.
"I hate you because of that cowardly blow in the dark," he said angrily. "But for that I might have let you go free, though I pitied Captain Ernscliffe for being deceived by you."
"Villain!" she exclaimed, "I have not deceived him!"