Her eyes blazed, her voice rose.  The old woman looked from one to the other, “far wide” but in evident curiosity.  The man had persisted in speaking to her in French, and Mollie had answered him in that language.

“Be it as you say!” cried her captor, suddenly; “only remember, Mollie, whether I am the person you prefer to see under this disguise or not, I am nevertheless your husband as fast as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh can tie the knot.  You shall know who I am, since it is only a question of to-night or to-morrow at the most.  Sally, you can go.”

Sally looked from one to the other with sharp, suspicious old eyes.

“Won’t the young lady want me, sir?  Is she able to ’tend to herself?”

“Quite able, Sally; she’s not so bad as you think.  Go away, like a good soul.  I have a soothing draught to administer to my patient.”

“Your patient!” said Mollie, turning the flashing light of her great blue eyes full upon him.

The man laughed.

“I had to invent a little fable for these good people.  Didn’t you notice they looked rather afraid of you?  Of course you did.  Well, my dear Mollie, they think you’re mad.”

“Mad?”

“Exactly.  You are, a little, you know.  They think you’ve come here under medical orders to recruit by the sea-shore.  I told them so.  One hate’s to tell lies, but, unfortunately, white ones are indispensable at times.”

The blue eyes shone full upon him, blazing with magnificent disdain.

“You are a poorer creature than even I took you to be, and you have acted a mean and dastardly part from the first—­the part of a schemer and a coward.  Pray, let me see the face of our modern Knight of Romance.”

Old Sally had hobbled from the room and they stood alone, half the width of the apartment between them.

“Hard words, my pretty one!  You forget it was all for love of you.  I didn’t want to see you the wife of an old dotard you didn’t care a fillip for.”

“So, to mend matters, you’ve made me the wife of a scoundrel.  I must forever hate and despise—­yourself.”

“Not so, Mollie!  I mean you to be very fond of me one of these days.  I don’t see why you shouldn’t.  I’m young; I’m well off; I’m clever; I’m not bad-looking.  There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be very fond of me, indeed.  Love begets love, they say, and I love you to madness.”

“So it appears.  A lunatic asylum would be the fitter place for you, if you must escape state prison.  Are we to stand here and bandy words all night?  Show me who you are and go.”

The man laid his hand on his hat.

“Have you no suspicions, Mollie?  Can’t you meet me half-way—­can’t you guess?”

“I don’t want to guess.”

She spoke defiantly; but her heart was going in great, suffocating plunges against her side, now that the supreme moment had come.

“Then, Mollie, behold your husband!”