“But not one morsel without you, Miss Somerville. Permit me,” and he passed her the cake with a profound bow.
A strange spell seized on her, intoxicating her senses with subtle pleasure, so that she mutely obeyed his gentle command, and, accepting the cake, began to eat, feeling almost as famished as he had declared himself to be.
“Thank you; I am going in a moment, but we have broken cake, if not bread, together, and we may be friends hereafter, may we not?” pleaded Doctor Ludington earnestly, bending his blue eyes tenderly upon her troubled face.
What she might have answered, whether with friendship or scorn, we may never know.
An unheard footstep had come along the hall, and Terry Groves listening a moment to the murmur of voices in the room, suddenly stalked in with blazing eyes and a face purple with fury.
Words of denunciation leaped from his lips; epithets of scorn for her who had dishonored the good old family name, curses for the man who had trailed her honor in the dust.
“You shall not live to boast of her dishonor!” he hissed savagely, drawing a weapon from his breast.
“Listen! I can explain it all!” cried the other, striking up his hand, but not before the bullet was buried in his breast. Then the men closed in mortal combat, hand to hand, the one in blind fury, the other to avenge the death he felt closing down upon him.
CHAPTER III.
THE VERDICT OF THE WORLD.