“Awaking at last!” he muttered, with a diabolical smile.  At that moment Faynie’s violet eyes opened wide and stared up into his face.

CHAPTER VII.

He raised his clinched hand, and the blow fell heavily upon the beautiful upturned face.

With returning consciousness, Faynie’s violet eyes opened slowly—­taking in, by the flickering light of the candle, the strange room in which she found herself; then, as they opened wider, in amazement too great for words, she beheld the figure of a man, half hidden among the shadows, standing but a few feet away from the couch, his eyes fastened upon her; she could even hear his nervous breathing.

With a gasp of terror Faynie sprang from the couch with a single bound; but the cry she would have uttered was strangled upon her lips by the heavy hand that fell suddenly over them, pressing so tightly against them as to almost take her breath away.

“Don’t attempt to scream or make any fuss,” cried a hissing voice in her ear—­“submit to the inevitable—­you are my wife—­there is nothing out of the way in your being here with me.  Come, now, take matters philosophically and we shall get along all right.”

He attempted to draw the girl into his encircling arms, her wonderful beauty suddenly dawning upon him; but she shrank from his embrace, and from the approach of his brandy-reeking lips, as though he had been a scorpion.

With a suddenness that took him greatly aback, and for an instant at a disadvantage, she freed herself from his grasp, and stood facing him like a young tragedy queen in all her furious anger and outraged pride.

“Do not utter another word, Lester Armstrong!” she panted, “you only add insult to injury—­why it seems to me some horrible trick of the senses—­some nightmare—­to imagine even that I could ever have cared for you—­to have believed you noble, honorable and—­a gentleman.  Why, you almost seem to be a different person in his guise—­you are so changed in tone and manner from him to whom I gave my heart.  The affection that I thought I had for you died a violent death.”

She did not notice that the man before her started violently at these words—­but the look of fear in his eyes gave place the next instant to braggadocio.

He would have answered her, but she held up her little white hand with a gesture commanding silence, saying, slowly, with quivering lips: 

“I repeat, the affection that I believed filled my heart for you died suddenly when I told you that I had changed my mind about eloping, and instead of studying my desires you insisted that the arrangement must be carried out.”

“My—­my—­love for you prompted it, Faynie,” he exclaimed, in a maudlin voice.  He knew he had the name wrong, but could not think what it was to save his life.  “Come, now, let’s kiss and make up, and love each other in the same old way, as the song goes.”