"Good Heavens! what do you mean?"
"But you do not hate me now, do you? Tell me, and tell me truly, are you sure that your abhorrence has all passed away?"
"Abhorrence!"
"Ah! you need not fear to confess it now. You did abhor me, you know."
"On my honor, I do not know what you are talking about, my own darling. I never wrote about you except with respect; and that, too, in spite of those awful, cutting, sneering letters which you wrote for years, and that last one, written after my father's death."
"Heavens! what do you mean?" cried Zillah, aghast. "I sent letters to you regularly, but I never wrote any thing but affectionate words."
"Affectionate words! I never received a letter that was not a sneer or an insult. I came home under an assumed name, thinking that I would visit Chetwynde unknown, to see what sort of a person this was who had treated me so. I changed my intention, however, and went there in my own name. I found that woman there--an impostor. How was I to know that? But I hated her from the outset."
"Ah," said Zillah, "you were then full of memories of Inez Cameron."
This thought had suddenly stung her, and, forgetting the Windham of Marseilles, she flung it out.
"Of what? Inez? What is that?" asked Lord Chetwynde, in a puzzle.