The angry husband followed Leon Vinton's leisurely steps, and quickly
overtook him.
Placing one hand on the villain's shoulder with a grasp like steel,
Captain Ernscliffe whirled him round face to face.
A malevolent sneer curved the lips of the handsome scoundrel as he
recognized his assailant. He tried to shake himself free from that
painfully tight grasp, but it was useless. He seemed to be held in a
vise.
"Unhand me, sir," he said, in a voice of angry expostulation.
"Villain!" exclaimed Captain Ernscliffe, in a low, deep voice of
concentrated passion. "How dared you speak to my wife? Apologize
immediately for the insult."
Leon Vinton's face assumed a blank stare of astonishment.
"Does _she_ consider it an insult to be recognized by an old friend?" he
inquired, in a voice of mocking courtesy.
Captain Ernscliffe's brow grew as dark as night. He shook the sneering
scoundrel by the shoulder as though he would have shaken the life out of
him.
"How dare you claim her as an old friend?" he thundered. "You whose
acquaintance is a disgrace to any woman. You, the most notorious and
unprincipled villain in the city. Retract those words before I kill
you."
"Come, come," answered Vinton, coolly and maliciously, "I am but
speaking the truth. As for killing, let me remind you that two can play
at that game. I have a pistol in my pocket, and I believe I am a better
shot than you are. But your wife, as you call her, is not worthy the
shedding of an honest man's blood! I will keep my weapon in its place,
and all I ask you is to confront me with the lady whose honor you are so
zealously defending. I think she will not dare to deny that once she
claimed me as her _dearest_ friend!"
Captain Ernscliffe drew back his hand to strike him in the face, but
something in his enemy's words and looks seemed to stagger him. He
hoarsely exclaimed:
"I will not pollute the pure air she breathes with your foul presence.
As for you, _liar_, beware how you assert things that you cannot prove."
"Hard words break no bones," laughed Leon Vinton, seeming to take
downright pleasure in tormenting the other. "I'm determined not to be
angry with you, for I do not think the lady we are discussing is worth
the trouble. I can prove all that I assert, and more besides."
"How? How?" exclaimed Ernscliffe, in sheer amaze at his unparalleled
effrontery.
"I _could_ prove it by the lady herself, but since you refuse to admit
me to her presence, come with me to my home, a few miles from the city,
and my housekeeper shall show you the elegant rooms Mrs. Ernscliffe
occupied when she was my dear friend and guest for a year."
The cool, insolent assertion fell on Captain Ernscliffe's ears like a
thunderbolt. He staggered back and stared at the calm, smiling villain
in wonder mingled with indefinable dread.
"My God!" he muttered, half to himself, "you would not make such an
assertion unless you could prove it."
"I can prove every assertion I have made," was the confident reply.
"Queenie Lyle ran away with me the day her mother and sisters went to
Europe. She lived with me nearly a year. I can prove this, remember."
"You married her!" gasped his adversary, his eyes starting, his face as
white as death.
Leon Vinton looked at that pale, anguish-stricken face, and laughed
aloud, the mocking laugh of a fiend.
"Married her?" he asked, sneeringly. "Oh, no, I am not one of the
marrying kind. She knew that, but she loved me, and was content to live
with me on my own terms."
There was a blank silence. Captain Ernscliffe dimly felt that the agony
he was enduring was commensurate with the pains of hell.
Leon Vinton enjoyed his misery to the utmost.
"We lived together a year," he went on, after a moment. "At first we
were very loving and very happy, but well--you know how such cases
always terminate--we wearied of each other. She was a spit-fire and a
termagant. She pushed me into the river and tried to drown me. She
thought she had succeeded, and ran away home. Her family kept her fatal
secret, and married her off to you."
"This is horrible if true!" ejaculated the listener.
"Come," said Leon Vinton, "go home with me. My carriage is outside the
gate. I merely chose to saunter in the park. You shall see her letters
to me, you shall hear what my housekeeper knows about the matter."
"I will go with you," said Captain Ernscliffe, rousing himself as from a
painful dream. "But if I find that you have lied to me, Vinton, I will
kill you!"