dly in love with my cousin, that she will hold me in
the same favor. But I'll stand none of her airs. I'll show her right
from the start that I'm the boss, and see how that will strike her
fancy. There'll be a terrible time when she comes to--screams, shrieks
of anger, that will call everybody to the door."

He turned on his heel and walked over to the mantel, where the innkeeper
had deposited the bottle and the glass.

He poured out a heavy draught and drank it at a single swallow. This was
followed by another and yet another.

"Ah, there's nothing like bracing oneself up for a scene like this," he
muttered, with a sardonic laugh.

The liquor seemed to turn the blood in his veins to fire and set his
heart in a glow. He laughed aloud. In that moment he felt as rich as a
king, and as diabolical as Satan himself.

He was nerved for any emergency; he was the girl's lord and master, her
wedded husband. She would be made to understand that fact with little
ceremony.

He threw himself down in a chair, where he could watch her, and waited
results, and each instant he sat there the fumes of the brandy rose
higher and higher, until it reached his brain.

"There was a laughing devil in his sneer
That woke emotions of both hate and fear;
And where his scowl of fierceness darkly fell,
Hope, withering, fled and mercy sighed farewell."

Yes, a few short moments and consciousness would return to the girl--the
stormy scene would begin.

Would the sharp eyes of love detect the difference between himself and
Lester Armstrong, whom he was impersonating? He knew every tone of his
cousin's voice so perfectly that he would have little difficulty in
imitating that. The more closely he watched the girl, the more conscious
he became of her wonderful beauty, and his heart gave a bound of
triumph.

It was worth a struggle, after all, to have as beautiful a bride as she,
even though she hated him.

"If I watch her much longer it will end by my being madly in love with
her," he mused. "I never could withstand a pretty face."

The wild winds moaned like demons outside. The bare branches writhed and
twisted in the storm, tapping weirdly against the window pane. The room
grew warmer as the fire took hold of the logs in the grate, and with
the heat the fumes of the brandy rose into his brain, and with it his
color heightened, his cheeks and lips were flushed and his eyes
scintillating. With unsteady hand he reached out f