“Well! now it was this! I thought you loved Carolyn and Zuleime better than me!” replied the artful woman, gazing half-reproachfully, half-pleadingly up into his smiling face.
“Love Carolyn and Zuleime better than you! Why you jealous little witch!” exclaimed the old man in rapture. “Love them more than you! Why, I have to pray Heaven’s pardon daily, for not loving them a hundredth part as much!—kiss me!”
Georgia nerved her loathing heart to give the demanded kiss, and then went and joined the party in the parlor, as beautiful, smooth, seductive, dangerous as ever; while the old man walked up and down the piazza, smiling to himself and saying—
“She is a child—nothing but a child!—a sweet, willful, witching child!”
Alas! little recking of the household treachery, the household wreck that “child” was preparing!
CHAPTER VI.
THE RUPTURED TIE.
Alas! they had been friends in youth,
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,