“Oh, Le! Le! you mistake! you mistake! Nobody forced me! Nobody persuaded me! I am going to marry Col. Anglesea of my own free will! Indeed I am! Oh, Le! Le!” wailed the unhappy girl.
The youth stared at her in speechless astonishment and bitter misery.
“Oh! don’t look so, Le!—don’t look so! I am not worth it, Le! Indeed I am not!”
“Do I understand you to say that you break your engagement to me, and marry this foreigner, of your own free, unbiased will?” he asked, at last, in cold, hard, restrained tones.
“Yes, yes, yes! that is what I am going to do!” replied Odalite, with the firmness of despair.
“Then you are false to me—to me, your lover, who had never a thought that was false to you!—to me, your mate of many years!—to me, your almost husband!” cried the youth, losing all self-command in the sharpness of his pain, and bursting into a tempest of grief and rage, and launching fierce reproaches upon her.
She raised her hands in piteous deprecation, and then held them up before her head as if to shield it from the storm.
But as he flashed the lightnings of scorn and hurled the thunder of condemnation upon her, she cowered lower and lower, holding by the bench on which she sat, until at length, utterly overwhelmed, she sank to the ground, rolled over, and lay with her face downward on the sand at his feet.
But she uttered no word in self-defense; she only wept and sobbed as if her heart were bursting.
By this time the frenzy of passion had spent itself, and there came a reaction that brought him to his senses. He looked down at Odalite in her misery. He saw in her now, not the faithless sweetheart, but the child of his boyish love and care.