“Oh, Cora! Cora! what have you done!” I cried, weeping bitterly; then struck with sharp indignation, I looked up, dashing the tears aside. “And that lady—that vile, unwomanly countess—she dares to punish a good old man for the sins of his child, while she urged him, the traitor, who tempted her to ruin, into a position which compels him to abandon her.”
“Of whom do you speak?” he asked, almost in a whisper, so deeply had my desperate words excited him.
“You know—you know!” I said, breaking forth afresh;
“why force me to utter that detested name?”
He took my hand. I did not withdraw it, for, at the moment, even his sympathy was welcome. Sighing deeply, he lifted it to his lips. I arose, determined to leave.
“You will not leave me thus without answer, without hope?” he said.
“I have but one answer to give, and no hope,” was my firm reply.
He looked at me an instant, growing pale as he gazed.
“You love another still, and believe he loves you,” he said, with a slow curve of the lip.
“Hold!” I cried, stung with shame at the remembrance that I had once confessed this love and gloried in it; “I do not love another. It is not in my nature to give anything but detestation to treachery and vice like his.”