ess and was gone, she looked up with a face so dark and moody that
it was almost sullen.

"Yes, I hate him!" she repeated, with a fierce moodiness that was quite
dreadful, "yes, I hate him! and I would kill him, like that rat, if I
could! He has been the curse of my whole life; he has made life cursed
to me; and his heart's blood shall be shed for it some day yet, I
swear!"

With all her beauty there was something so horrible in the look she
wore, that Sir Norman involuntarily recoiled from her. Her sharp eyes
noticed it, and both grew red and fiery as two devouring flames.

"Ah! you, too, shrink from me, would you? You, too, recoil in horror!
Ingrate! And I have come to save your life!"

"Madame, I recoil not from you, but from that which is tempting you
to utter words like these. I have no reason to love him of whom you
speak--you, perhaps, have even less; but I would not have his blood,
shed in murder, on my head, for ten thousand worlds! Pardon me, but you
do not mean what you say."

"Do I not? That remains to be seen! I would not call it murder plunging
a knife into the heart of a demon incarnate like that, and I would have
done it long ago and he knows it, too, if I had the chance!"

"What has he done to you to make you do bitter against him?"

"Bitter! Oh, that word is poor and pitiful to express what I feel when
his name is mentioned. Loathing and hatred come a little nearer the
mark, but even they are weak to express the utter--the--" She stopped in
a sort of white passion that choked her very words.

"They told me he was your husband," insinuated Sir Norman, unutterably
repelled.

"Did they?" she said, with a cold sneer, "he is, too--at least as far as
church and state can make him; but I am no more his wife at heart than
I am Satan's. Truly of the two I should prefer the latter, for then I
should be wedded to something grand--a fallen angel; as it is, I have
the honor to be wife to a devil who never was an angel?"

At this shocking statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if
for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another
mirthless laugh.

"Of all the pictures of ugliness you ever saw or heard of, Sir Norman
Kingsley, do tell me if there ever was one of them half so repulsive or
disgusting as that thing?"

"Really," said Sir Norman, in a subdued tone, "he is not the most
prepossessing little man in the world; but, madame, you do look and
speak in a manner quite dre