"I will not! I will not! I will not!" Then, as though her asseveration had slightly mollified her, she added: "Or if I do——" and, then paused.

"Continue!" exclaimed the Doctor, still calm. "You pause at a most interesting period. Or if you do——"

"Or if I do," wrathfully rejoined the woman—"I'll make your whole life a burden to you!"

"No, my wife that is to be, you will not even do that. Perhaps you might try, but I should not permit you to succeed in any such an undertaking. No, my dear friend, you and I are going to be a model couple, provided——"

"Provided what?"

"That you curb your curiosity as to things that do not concern you."

"But this does concern me."

"As I have intimated already, Mabel Sloane being dead, you can have no interest whatever in knowing what relations existed between us."

"Not even if, as the newspapers claim, she had a child?"

"Not even in that case."