"But you must not," he replied, gravely yet tenderly, "because"——
"You love another," she interrupted him, very quickly, "You love Julia Serena, Hortensia's lovely daughter; and she loves you, and you are to be wedded soon. You see," she added, with a faint painful smile, "that I know everything about you. I knew it long since; long, long before I gave myself to you; even before I loved you, Paul—for I have loved you, also, long!"
"Loved me long!" he exclaimed, in astonishment, "how can that be, when you never saw me until the day before yesterday?"
"Oh! yes I have," she answered sadly. "I have seen you and known you many years; though you have forgot[pg 175]ten me, if even, which I doubt, you ever noticed me at all. But I can bring it to your mind. Have you forgotten how, six summers since, as you were riding down the Collis Hortulorum, you passed a little girl weeping by the wayside?—"
"Over a wounded kid? No, I remember very well. A great country boor had hurt it with a stone."
"And you," exclaimed the girl, with her eyes flashing fire, "you sprang down from your horse, and chastised him, till he whined like a beaten hound, though he was twice as big as you were; and then you bound up the kid's wound, and wiped away the tears—innocent tears they were—of the little girl, and parted her hair, and kissed her on the forehead. That little girl was I, and I have kept that kiss upon my brow, aye, and in my heart too! until now. No lips of man or woman have ever touched that spot which your lips hallowed. From that day forth I have loved you, I have adored you, Paullus. From that day forth I have watched all your ways, unseen and unsuspected. I have seen you do fifty kind, and generous, and gallant actions; but never saw you do one base, or tyrannous, or cowardly, or cruel—"
"Until that fatal night!" he said, with a deep groan. "May the Gods pardon me! I never shall forgive my self."
"No! no! I tell you, no!" cried the girl, impetuously. "I tell you, that I was not deceived, if I fell; but I did not fall then! I knew that you loved Julia, years ago. I knew that I never could be yours in honor; and that put fire and madness in my brain, and despair in my heart. And my home was a hell, and those who should have been my guides and saviours were my destroyers; and I am—what I am; but in that you had no share. On that night, I but obeyed the accursed bidding of the blackest and most atrocious monster that pollutes Jove's pure air by his breath!"
"Bidding," he exclaimed, starting back in horror, "Catiline's bidding?"
"My father's," answered the miserable girl. "My own father's bidding!"