nty years ago--young and
beautiful, and bright enough even for the fastidious Englishman to
love? Look at me now--ugly and old, wrinkled and wretched, deserted
and despised--and tell me if I have not greater reason to hate you than
ever woman had to hate man?"

She tossed her arms aloft with a madwoman's shriek--crying out her
words in a long, wild scream.

"I hate you--I hate you! Villain! dastard! perjured wretch! I hate
you, and I curse you, here in the church you call holy! I curse you
with a ruined woman's curse, and hot and scathing may it burn on your
head and on the heads of your children's children!"

The last horrible words aroused the listeners from their petrified
trance. The Reverend Cyrus Green lifted up his voice in a tone of
command:

"This woman is mad! She is a furious lunatic! Dawson! Humphreys!
come here and secure her!"

"The child! the child!" she cried, with a screech of demoniac delight;
"the spawn of the viper is within my grasp!"

One plunge forward and the infant heir was in her arms, held high
aloft. One second later, and its blood and brains would have
bespattered the stone floor, but Mr. Carlyon sprung forward and
wrenched it from her grasp.

The two men summoned by the clergyman closed upon her and held her
fast; her frantic shrieks rang to the roof. Then suddenly, all ceased,
and, foaming and livid, she fell between them in a fit.

CHAPTER V.

ZENITH'S MALEDICTION.

A dead pause of blank consternation; the faces around a sight to see;
horror and wonder in every countenance--most of all in the countenance
of Sir Jasper Kingsland.

The clergyman was the first to speak.

"The woman is stark mad," he said. "We must see about this. Such
violent lunatics must not be allowed to go at large. Here, Humphreys,
do you and Dawson lift her up and carry her to my house. It is the
nearest, and she can be properly attended to there."

"You know her, Sir Jasper, do you not?" asked Lady Helen, with quick
womanly intuition.

"Know her?" Sir Jasper replied, "know Zenith? Great Heaven! I thought
she was dead."

The Reverend Cyrus Green and Lady Helen exchanged glances. Mr. Carlyon
looked in sharp surprise at the speaker.

"Then she is not mad, after all! I thought she mistook you for some
one else. If you know her, you have the best right to deal with her.
Shall these men take her to Kingsland Court?"

"Not for ten thousand worlds!" Sir Jasper cried, impetuousl