Thus, though he knew it not, the tables were turned on Roland with a vengeance.
Like Hester, he could not agree with Romeo—
'How sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,'
when the said tongues addressed all their sweetness to others.
'She is an ungrateful, selfish, horrible girl—I'll never forgive her—never!' said Maude, almost sobbing with anger.
'How filthy lucre rules the world now!' exclaimed Roland. 'Do such girls as she ever repent the mischief they make—the hearts they have broken?'
'As if hearts break nowadays? she would ask,' said Hester with something of a smile.
'Likely enough—it is her style, no doubt. But can you, Hester, or anyone, explain this cruel duplicity? To me it seems as if I were still in the middle of a horrid dream—a dream from which I must suddenly wake. That she, so winsome and artless apparently—so gentle and loving, should become so cold, so calculating, so mercilessly cruel now!'
'I always mistrusted her,' said Maude bitterly. 'People call her eyes hazel—to me they always seemed a kind of vampire-green.'
Roland made no reply, but he was thinking with Whyte-Melville: