"Oh, I cannot say that, Zillah. There is something piquant, even picturesque, about you, that one does not readily forget, or ever dislike; besides, real earnest love is better worth having, after the domestic treason which I have just discovered."
Again the woman's eyes blazed forth their sudden joy. She arose from his feet, restless and eager.
"She has wronged you—she has embittered my life. I was your slave—let her become so. Then shall we both have vengeance!"
"And beggary with it," answered the General, bitterly. "No, no, Zillah, I am not so fond of vengeance as that; besides, hers is only a sin of feeling, and she seems to have suffered for it."
The woman turned white, till the dusky shadows under her eyes seemed black by contrast.
"A sin of feeling!" she almost shrieked, seizing the vellum book, and turning over the crushed leaves rapidly with her trembling hands. "You have not read all. You have only glanced at passages, perhaps!"
"And they have been sufficiently unpleasant. I do not care to search farther!"
Zillah still turned over the leaves, tearing them more than once in her rude haste. Her fierce eyes glanced from passage to passage. At length, like a hawk pouncing upon its prey, she opened the book wide, and pressed her hand hard upon a page which seemed more hastily written than the rest, for it was blotted and broken up, evidently full of exclamations and bursts of passionate thought.
"Read that!" said the woman, pressing her finger upon the page till the blood was strained back to the wrist, leaving the hand pallid as marble. "Read that!"
The General took up the journal, and read. Again that expression of white rage crept over his face, and a smile rose up to his mouth, coiling around it like a viper.