"I can add my testimony to Mr. Colville's assertion," said Doctor Pratt. "Your lover has, indeed, been beguiled into forgetfulness of his grief by the fascination of the charming widow. They are now acknowledged lovers!"
"I do not believe it," answered Lily, proudly. "Do you think I would take your word, Harold Colville, or yours, Doctor Pratt, for the truth? You have proved yourselves villains, and I do not place the least confidence in your assertions. You tell me these things believing I will the more readily yield to your wishes. But you are mistaken—sadly mistaken! I tell you now that if Lancelot Darling should marry Mrs. Vance to-morrow it would not make any difference in my rejection of a villain's suit!"
Both the worthies glared at her with fierce wrath.
"So be it," said Colville, angrily. "But remember, you will remain a prisoner until you accede to my wishes, no matter how long you hold out. Haidee, you need not provide so sumptuously for so contumacious a captive. Let bread and water be her portion until her rebellious spirit is broken. I will see her again in a month's time. Come, doctor; come, Haidee; let us leave her to the pleasures of solitary contemplation."
All three retired; the door, which had been provided with another key, was securely locked, and she was left again in her loneliness and bitter sorrow.
Weak and weary with her long journey and unbroken fast she lay still, her limbs aching with fatigue and her heart almost broken with sorrow.
Her momentary glimpse of her dear ones had filled her heart with a wild flood of new tenderness for them. She had come back to them from the dead, and she felt that they would have been filled with the deepest joy in receiving her again.
She had been so cruelly torn from them in the very moment when they first caught sight of her! She wondered what they would think.
"Perhaps they will share old Willis' delusion that it was a spirit," thought she, with a flood of tears.
She had almost forgotten Fanny in the bitter anguish of being retaken thus in the very moment of impending re-union with her family.