"Try and tell of my influence over you, seek to speak one word against me, and mark the result.

I defy you to utter one word." Again I was silent.

I seemed hemmed in on every hand by this man's terrible power.

"Come," he said, "do you consent to my terms?
Do you relinquish all thoughts, all hopes, of ever winning Gertrude Forrest ?" In spite of my strange situation, I could not help seeing two rays of light.

One was, that this man must have seen that Miss Forrest looked on me with a degree of favour; and the other was that, if his power was as great as he boasted, he needed not be so anxious to obtain my consent to his terms.