"Molly, what has happened?" he asks, advancing toward her, shocked at her appearance, which evinces all the deepest signs of woe. "What has distressed you?"
"You have," cries she, with sudden vehement passion, all her sorrow and anger growing into quick life as she sees him. "You are the cause of all my misery. Why do you come near me? You might, at least, have grace enough to spare me the pain of seeing you."
"I do not understand," he says, his face very pale. "In how have I offended,—I, who would rather be dead than cause you any unhappiness? Tell me how I have been so unfortunate."
"I hate you," she says, with almost childish cruelty, sobbing afresh. "I wish you had died before I came to this place. You have come between me and the only man I love. Yes,"—smiting her hands together in a very agony of sorrow,—"he may doubt it if he will, but I do love him; and now we are separated forever. Even my ring"—with a sad glance at it—"is broken, and so is—my heart."
"You are alluding to—Luttrell?" asks he,—his earliest suspicions at last confirmed,—speaking with difficulty, so dry his lips have grown.
"I am."
"And how have I interfered between you and—him?"
"Why did you speak to me of love again last night," retorts she, "when you must know how detestable a subject it is to me? He saw you put your arm around me; he saw—ah! why did I not tell you then the truth (from which through a mistaken feeling of pity I refrained), that your mere touch sickened me? Then you stooped, and he thought—you know what he thought—and yet," cries Molly, with a gesture of aversion, "how could he have thought it possible that I should allow you of all men to—kiss me?"
"Why speak of what I so well know?" interrupts he hoarsely, with bent head and averted eyes. "You seldom spare me. You are angered, and for what? Because you still hanker after a man who flung you away,—you, for whose slightest wish I would risk my all. For a mere chimera, a fancy, a fear only half developed, he renounced you."
"Say nothing more," says Molly, with pale lips and eyes large and dark through regretful sorrow; "not another word. I think he acted rightly. He thought I was false, and so thinking he was right to renounce. I do not say this in his defense or because—or for any reason only——" She pauses.