as, therefore, resolved to
press things forward, in hopes of getting some clew at least to the
labyrinth in which his mind was wandering. He therefore took Lord
Chetwynde by the arm and drew him up toward Hilda, so that he stood
between her and Zillah.

"Now," he said, abruptly, turning to Hilda, "I have brought the man
you wish to see. Here he is before you, face to face. Look at him and
answer me. Is this man your husband?"

These words stung Zillah to the soul. In an instant all pity and all
tenderness toward Hilda vanished utterly. All her baseness arose
before her, unredeemed by any further thought of former love or of
her present misery. She sprang forward, her eyes flashing, her hands
clenched, her whole frame trembling, and all her soul on fire, as it
kindled with the fury of her passionate indignation.

"_Her_ husband!" she exclaimed, with infinite passion and unutterable
contempt--"_her_ husband! Say, Mr. Chute, do you know who it is that
you see before you? I will tell you. Behold, Sir, the woman who
betrayed me; the false friend who sought my life, and, in return for
the love and confidence of years, tried to cast me, her friend, to
death. This, Sir, is the woman whom you have been so long seeking,
herself--the paramour of that wretch, Gualtier--my betrayer and my
assassin--_Hilda Krieff_."

These words were flung forth like lava-fire, scorching and blighting
in their hot and intense hate. Her whole face and manner and tone had
changed. From that gentle girl who, as Miss Lorton, had been never
else than sweet and soft and tender and mournful, she was now
transformed to a wrathful and pitiless avenger, a baleful fury,
beautiful, yet terrific; one inspired by love stronger than death,
and jealousy as cruel as the grave; one who was now pitiless and
remorseless; one whose soul was animated by the one feeling only of
instant and implacable vengeance. The fierceness of that inexorable
wrath glowed in her burning eyes, and in the rigid outstretched arm
with which she pointed toward Hilda. In this moment of her fervid
passion her Indian nature was all revealed in its hot, tempestuous,
unreasoning fury; and the Zillah of this scene was that same Zillah
who, years before, had turned away from the bedside of her dying
father to utter those maledictions, those taunts, and those bitter
insults, which Lord Chetwynde so well remembered.

Yet to Hilda at that instant these words, with all their fury and
inexorable h