"You are mistaken, Mother; I never could have been happy had I accepted that true, noble heart, and given in exchange my poor broken and divided one, and certainly he never could have taken me into his great love after knowing me as I am, which he surely must have done, or I, at least, would have been eternally wretched."
"You did not tell him?" was the quick inquiry.
"I told him that I was a wife. That my heart was forever bound up in those matrimonial vows still unsevered, and that I loved him as a brother, and no more."
"You are mad! a fool! You know not what you do," and trembling with excitement she sank back on the chair from which she had risen.
Lillian did not speak or move, but tears came welling up through the freshly opened wounds in her poor heart, and filled her large pensive eyes with their bitter moisture.
Again the mother spoke.
"I feel disposed, just now, to enlighten you a little in regard to your future prospects if you persist in this silly sentimental mood, which you seem to think so becoming! I have striven hard to keep it from you and your brother for many years, and to surround you with every luxury your inherited station really demanded. More than this, I have planned, wrought, and guided with true maternal skill and instinct the fortunes of you both in such a manner that you might, if you would, ever retain your enviable position in the social world, for which I have exerted myself to fit you."
"I do not understand you, Mother. Be merciful and enlighten me, as you offered to do."
"Yes, I will; but you will not find much mercy in it. Know, then, that we are not owners of this beautiful estate. On the contrary, it was mortgaged to the father of George St. Clair by your own father some time before his death. Think, if you can, of the long years of toil I have experienced since that time, and ask if you are right in pulling down about our heads the whole structure of prosperity and affluence that I have been so long in building."
"I discern your intricate plans, my Mother, and pity you."