"Are you not the girl whose name was Edith Allen?" demanded her companion, sharply.
"My name is Edith Allen—"
She checked herself suddenly, for she had unwittingly come near uttering the rest of it. She went a step or two nearer the woman, trying to distinguish her features, which were so shadowed by the veil she wore that she could not tell how she looked.
"Ah! so you will admit your identity, but you will not confess to the name by which I have addressed you. Why?" demanded the unknown visitor, with a sneer.
"Because I do not choose," said Edith, coldly. "Who are you, and why have you forced yourself upon me thus?"
"And you will also deny this?" cried the stranger, in tones of repressed passion, but ignoring the girl's questions, as she pulled a paper from her pocket and thrust under her eyes a notice of the marriage at Wyoming.
Edith grew pale at the sight of it, when the other, quick to observe it, laughed softly but derisively.
"Ah, no; you cannot deny that you were married to Emil Correlli, only the night before last, in the presence of many, many people," she said, in a hoarse, passionate whisper. "Do you think you can deceive me? Do you dare to lie to me?"
"I have no wish to deceive you. I would not knowingly utter a falsehood to any one," Edith gravely returned. "I know, of course, to what you refer; but"—throwing back her head with a defiant air—"I will never answer to the name by which you have called me!"
"Ha! say you so! And why?" eagerly exclaimed her companion, regarding her curiously. "Can you deny that you went to the altar with Emil Correlli?" she continued, excitedly. "That a clergyman read the marriage service over you?—that you were afterward introduced to many people as his wife?—and that you are now living under the same roof with him, surrounded by all this luxury"—sweeping her eyes around the room—"for which he has paid?"