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274 excruciating. I have not got such a boiling for a long time. Hang you, let me go! What do you want of me here?"

"Gently! gently!" said Shiana. "It might be a long time before we would be face to face like this again, and there is another little matter puzzling me. I have been listening to your talk there for a good while. I have an exact description from you of all the deceit and treachery and crooked dealing which you have practised upon myself for the last thirteen years. In all that trickery, however, there was nothing but what anybody ought to expect that he would get from you. But the act you have done against that young woman in the west, without reason or cause, without want or necessity, without her having deserved it from you in any way under Heaven, is, I think, the most abominable act that anybody ever saw done by man or devil. That act could not be surpassed in treachery, or in meanness, or in wickedness. I think it is the vilest and most malicious act that ever was done. Shame upon you! Oh, shame upon you, you vile thing! And you yourself not only acknowledging it, but boasting of it! I did not think the like of you was to be found, even down at the bottom of hell itself! Horror upon you! Oh, the horror of my heart upon you! And to think that they say you were once the most beautiful of the angels, and the brightest, and the noblest, and of the highest glory of all that were in the uppermost Heaven above! 'Praise to the King of Saints, there is much between yesterday and to-day' with you. It was a long fall and a deep one, for you. I dare say that once upon a time you had very little notion that such