The Breaking of the Storm

She looked at him and recoiled with a cry of dismay. He stood before her so ghastly, so awful, that with a blind, unthinking motion of intense terror she put out both hands as if to keep him off.

"You have reason to fear me!" he said, in a hoarse, unnatural voice. "Wives have been murdered for less than this!"

Sybilla and Edwards heard the ominous words, and looked blankly in each other's faces. They heard no more. The baronet caught his wife's wrist in a grasp of iron, drew her into the dressing-room, and closed the door. He stood with his back to it, gazing at her, his blue eyes filled with lurid rage.

"Where have you been?"

He asked the question in a voice more terrible from its menacing calm than any wild outburst of fury.

"In the Beech Walk," she answered, promptly.

"With whom?"

"With Mr. Parmalee."

Her glance never fell. She looked at him proudly, unquailingly, full in the face. The look in his flaming eyes, the tone of his ominous voice, were bitterly insulting, and with insult her imperious spirit rose.

"And you dare stand before me--you dare look me in the face," he said, "and tell me this?"

"I dare!" she said, proudly. "You have yet to learn what I dare do, Sir Everard Kingsland!"

She drew herself up in her beauty and her pride, erect and defiant. Her long hair fell loose and unbound, her face was colorless as marble; but her dark eyes were flashing with anger and wounded pride, and at her brightest she had never looked more beautiful than she did now.