“Then you will not give me a home?”
“Yes, as long as I have a home you may share it.”
“I cannot understand you.”
Scott arose, and, standing before Irene with folded arms and compressed lips, she saw him again just as she 251 had seen him in her dream, and so vividly was its terrors recalled, that a cry escaped her lips.
“Irene Wilmer,” he said, “for such you are still, listen to me. The time was when I loved you—when I laid my whole soul at your feet. It was not, perhaps, with vain and foolish words of flattery that I won you, but I gave you the free and undivided love of an honest heart. You were fond of flattery, and in your vanity you were led to believe that another loved you better than I, and the man you should have spurned as you would the vilest of reptiles, was taken to your heart as though he were a king.”
Irene closed her hands convulsively.
“You trampled upon the love I gave you, and, lured on to ruin by the wiles of a vain and hollow hearted fop, you spurned my love as though it were a worthless toy, while he, with his soft and senseless words of pretended love, caused you to cast aside that most sacred and ennobling of all a woman may possess—your honor.”
Irene bowed her head upon the table beside her, as she said in a low voice:
“Stop.”
“No, hear me through. I tried to keep you from sinning. I did all that man could do to stop your downward course, but you answered me only with sneering words, and when I asked you to give up the attentions of a man who had no right to your affections, you called me cruel and unfeeling, and the world looked in scorn upon my misery. You had no pity, and when I knew of your disgrace, I thought I should go mad. Day by 252 day my love for you died away. Not because I had grown tired of your presence, but because you had grown tired of mine, and without respect I could not love. Another supplanted me in your affections, but still I tried to do my duty. You were bound to me by the laws of God and man, and never, until you of your own free will severed our lives, did I for one moment entertain the thought of casting you off.”