Cornelius looked at her like one confounded. She spoke composedly, as if she neither cared for nor felt that, on her own confession, she was guilty. Of excuse or justification she evidently thought not.
"You think of Daisy," she continued; "think of my conduct to her what you choose. I will only say this, though she, poor child, has hated me, as she loved you, with her whole heart, you have been, are still, and will remain, her greatest enemy."
"I!" indignantly exclaimed Cornelius.
"Yes: and you must be blind not to see that, by seeking to sever from you a child whom a few years will make a woman, I was her best friend; and so she will know some day, when you break her heart, and tell her you never meant it."
"May God forsake me when I place not her happiness before mine!" replied
Cornelius, in a low tone, and giving me a troubled look.
"You are generous," answered Miriam, with an ironical, but not unmusical laugh, and looking at me over her shoulder with all the scorn of conscious beauty; "you think so now; but I know, and have always known, better. And yet, spite of that knowledge, and though with foolish insolence she ever placed herself in my way, I have felt sorry for her at times. Of course you will not believe this: with the exaggeration of your character, you will at once set me down as one delighting in evil; whereas what you call evil is to me only a different form of good, justifiable according to the end in view. If I had succeeded in inspiring you with an exclusive, all-engrossing passion—even though the cost had been a few pictures less, and the loss of Daisy's heart—know that I would have conferred on you the greatest blessing one human being can bestow on another."
Her eyes shone with inward fire; her cheeks glowed; her parted lips trembled. I do not think we had ever seen her half so beautiful. Cornelius looked at her, and smiled bitterly.
"I pity you," she said, with some scorn; "I pity you, to deride a feeling you cannot feel: know that I at least speak not without the knowledge."
"Oh, I know it," he exclaimed, involuntarily.
"You know it?"