“Can you—can you know, my Zana, for I will call you mine this once—can you know how much love you are trampling to death?”
“I only know that no one feeling in my heart answers to it.”
“And yet, oh, heavens, how I have lavished the first fruits of my life away upon this one hope! all other women were as nothing—to me. The proud Estelle, before whom Irving bends like a slave, and Morton in infatuation, could not win a thought from a heart too full of you for anything else. And little Cora, whose beauty and childish grace divided Irving’s heart with Estelle, was to me vapid and uninteresting, because my soul had room for but one idol, and that idol Zana!”
I grew heart-sick and felt myself turning pale. Was it true?—could the heart of man be so vile? George Irving the slave of Estelle, and Cora, my poor Cora!—
“You speak of Irving,” I said, in a voice that shook, though I made great efforts to compose it; “and of Estelle—tell me—tell—where is that lady?”
“What! are you ignorant that she is in Scotland, she and her mother, consoling the countess, and only waiting for the decencies of mourning to be over, for the wedding?”
A faintness seized me. Poor, poor Cora, this would kill her, it was killing me. Estelle Irving, her husband, the thought was a pang such as I had never felt before; to Cora I could have given him up, but Estelle, from my soul I abhorred her.
“You are silent, Zana,” said my companion. “You will reflect on what I have said. Remember it is not the penniless tutor who would have divided his crust with you before, who asks your hand now; I possess expectations—certainties that even the haughty Estelle would not reject. The Marston Court living is one of the best in that part of England; I have already taken orders.”
“But I thought the Marston Court living was promised to Mr. Clark, poor Cora’s father,” I exclaimed.
“By Lord Clare, yes; but his sister, you know, has her own ideas, and since that unpleasant affair of the daughter, she refuses to think of it.”