"So you have palmed this lady off on me as your sister, and trapped me, and would have destroyed me." His lip quivered; for they had passed the iron through his heart.
But he manned himself, and carried it off like a soldier's son: "But if I was fool enough to leave my father, I am not fool enough to present to the world your cast-off mistress as my wife." (Lucy hid her face in her hands.) "Here, Miss Lucy Monckton--or whatever your name may be--here is the marriage license.

Take that and my contempt, and do what you like with them." With these words he dashed into Bartley's private room, and there broke down.

It was a bitter cup, the first in his young life.
The baffled schemers drank wormwood too; but they bore it differently.
The woman cried, and took her punishment meekly; the man raged and threatened vengeance.
"No, no," said Lucy; "it serves us right.

I wish I had never seen the fellow: then you would have kept your word, and married me." "I will marry you now, if you can obey me." "Obey you, Leonard?
You have been my ruin; but only marry me, and I will be your slave in everything--your willing, devoted, happy slave." "That is a bargain," said Monckton, coolly.

"I'll be even with him; I will marry you in his name and in his place." This puzzled Lucy.
"Why in his name ?" said she.
He did not answer.
"Well, never mind the name," said she, "so that it is the right man--and that is you." Then Monckton's fertile brain, teeming with villainies, fell to hatching a new plot more felonious than the last.