"I wish to see you, Mr. Schuyler Cluett."
"Ho, Lomax, my dear fellow, I did not know you; but you look ill and something has surely happened, for you are as haggard as though after a long illness," and Schuyler Cluett held out his hand.
"No, Cluett, I do not take the hand of a villain," was the stern reply of the young farmer.
"By Heaven! are you drunk? What do you mean?" and the eyes of the young aristocrat flashed, while his friend Rayford, half-dressed, peered out of his door, startled at the turn affairs had taken.
"I mean, Schuyler Cluett, that you, like a snake that you are, fascinated poor little Ruby Raymond, she that was to have been my wife.
"We were happy until you came, and she was all my own; but one unlucky day I dragged you away from death, and I took you to her home, and from that moment you began to win her from me.
"I saw it all, I felt it all, for she became unhappy, and she told me she thought we should be as sister and brother, for she loved me, but not as a wife should.
"She saw how it hurt me to hear her say so, and so she said she did not mean it; but she deceived me, for she did mean it, and one week ago, on the very eve of our wedding-day, you came like a thief in the night and stole her from me."
"Good Heaven! Lomax, I am not guilty of this, and you wrong me, indeed you do!" cried Schuyler Cluett, his face the picture of amazement.
Kent Lomax seemed astounded, and asked, sternly: