'Why are you here? You're dead and buried.'

'I am here, Wykham Delandre, for no love of you, but because I hate
another even more than I do you!' A great passion blazed in her eyes.

'Him?' he asked, in so fierce a whisper that even the woman was for an
instant startled till she regained her calm.

'Yes, him!' she answered. 'But make no mistake, my revenge is my own;
and I merely use you to help me to it.' Wykham asked suddenly:

'Did he marry you?'

The woman's distorted face broadened out in a ghastly attempt at a
smile. It was a hideous mockery, for the broken features and seamed
scars took strange shapes and strange colours, and queer lines of white
showed out as the straining muscles pressed on the old cicatrices.

'So you would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that your
sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my revenge
on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair's breadth. I have come
here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that if any
violence be done me where I am going there may be a witness.'

'Where are you going?' demanded her brother.

'That is my affair! and. I have not the least intention of letting you
know!' Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and fell.
As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following his
sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he would