He rose unsteadily, and held by the back of a chair.
"Beast! traitress! you are my wife, are you?" hissed he, in a furious whisper. "I had my doubts of you all the while. But this shall ruin you."
"Oh, no, my excellent tailor, I am above your puny attacks. So, now that we have squared accounts, I will bid you a long adieu."
She bowed to the floor, rose, and gave him one long, fierce, taunting glance.
He drew a pistol from his breast, took deliberate aim, and fired it full at her face, just as she closed the door. It missed her by a hair-breadth.
She looked in again with a diabolical laugh, and vanished; and he, too, fled by the opposite door, just as the hotel servants rushed in to quell the tumult.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING.
"Circles and circles of brightening light breaking over me; a faint, but delicious sense of comfort; a swift vanishing of the distorted phantoms which have left me here for dead—a kind and dear awakening.