“Valerie! love! wife!” murmured Volaski, in low and tender tones, as he essayed to take her hand.

But she snatched it from him hastily, gasping: 

“Do not speak to me in that way!  Do not call me love or wife!”

“No man on earth has a better right to speak to you in this way than I have.  No other man in the world has the right to call you love or wife but me!  You are my wife!” grimly answered the young count.

“I am the wife of the Duke of Hereward.  Oh, Heaven, that I were a corpse instead!” gasped Valerie.

“‘The wife of the Duke of Hereward!’ Have you then forgotten our betrothal at St. Petersburg?  Our flight from Warsaw to St. Vito?  Our marriage at the little chapel of Santa Maria?  Our short, blissful honeymoon in the vine-dresser’s cottage under the Apennines?” he inquired, bitterly.

“I have forgotten nothing!  Oh, Heaven!  Oh, earth!  Oh, Waldemar! that I could die! that I could die!” she wailed in low, heartbroken tones.

It was well for her that the corner sofa stood in the shade, far removed from the seats of the other guests in that long drawing-room.

“Valerie! love! wife!” he murmured again.

“Oh, Waldemar, if I were your wife, as I truly believed myself then to have been, oh, why did you not defend and protect me from all the world, even from my father—­even from myself?  Oh, why did you suffer me to be torn from your protection, to be deceived with a false story of your death, and forced into this marriage?  Oh, Waldemar! if I were indeed and in truth your lawful wife, as I believed myself to be, why, oh why did you permit all these evils to happen to me?  Ah, what a position is mine!  What a position!  I cannot bear it!  I will not bear it!  I will not live!  I will kill myself!  I ought to kill myself!  It is the only way out of this!” she wailed, wringing her hands.

“I will kill that Duke of Hereward!” hissed Volaski, through his clenched teeth.

“Hush!  For mercy’s sake, hush!  Put away such thoughts from your heart!  I, the only wrong-doer, should be the only victim!  Whatever wrong has been done, the Duke of Hereward has been blameless.  He knew nothing of my former marriage; if he had, I do not believe he would have married me, even if I had been a princess.”

“He was deceived, then?” coldly inquired the count.

“He was; but not willingly by me.  I was forced to be silent about my marriage.”

“You were ‘forced’ from my protection! ‘forced’ to conceal the fact of your marriage with me! and ‘forced’ to marry the Duke of Hereward under false colors.  Could force on one side, and feebleness on the other, be carried any further than this?” muttered Volaski, between his teeth.

“I knew how helpless, in the hands of my parents, I was,” wailed Valerie.

“Well, you are a duchess!  Do you love the Duke of Hereward?”

“Oh, mercy! what shall I say?  He deserves all my love, honor, and duty!”