ate, came like balm and sweetness--like the gentle
utterances of peace and calm. They roused her up at last from that
great and unendurable horror into which she had fallen; they brought
back her vanished strength; they restored her to herself. For they
showed her this one thing plainly, and this above all things, that it
was not the dead who stood thus before her, but the living! Had her
former suspense been delayed a few moments more she would have died
in her agony; but now the horror had vanished; the one before her
bore no longer the terrors of the unseen, but became an ordinary
living being. It was Zillah herself, not in death as an apparition,
but in life as a woman. She cared nothing for the hate and the
vengeance, nothing for the insult and the scorn. She cared nothing
for the mystery that enshrouded Zillah, nor was it of any consequence
to her then how she had been saved. Enough was it that Zillah was
really alive. At this she revived. Her weakness left her. She drew a
long breath, and all the vigor of her strong soul returned.

But on the others the effect of Zillah's words was overwhelming. Obed
Chute started back in amazement at this revelation, and looked
wonderingly upon this woman, who had but lately been winning his
sympathy as an injured wife; and he marveled greatly how this
delicate, this beautiful and high-bred lady, could, by any
possibility, be identified with that atrocious monster whose image
had always existed in his mind as the natural form of Zillah's
traitorous friend.

On Lord Chetwynde the effect of all this, though equally great, was
different. One look at Hilda in her first consternation and horror,
and another at Zillah in her burning passion, had been enough. As
Zillah finished, he caught her outstretched hand as it was pointing
toward Hilda, and there rushed through all his being a rapture beyond
words, as a dim perception of the truth came to his mind.

"Oh, my darling!" he cried, "say it again. Can this be possible? Is
_she_, then, an impostor? Have I, indeed, been blinded and deceived
all this time by her?"

Zillah tore her hand away from his grasp. In that moment of fury
there came to her a thousand jealous fears to distract her. The
thought that he had been so far deceived as to actually believe this
woman his wife was intolerable. There was a wrathful cloud upon her
brow as she turned her eyes to look at him, and in those eyes there
was a glance, hard, stern, and cold, such