“You ought to be ashamed to acknowledge such a state of heart,” returned Lucy, indignantly. “It is sinful!”
“I cannot help it. That is just how I feel,” cried Jess, great sighs welling up from her heart to her lips.
“You have promised to marry a young man whom you do not love!” repeats Lucy, for the first time realizing that part of Jess’ excited remarks. She was about to add: “How could you do it?” Then she thinks better of what she was about to say, and goes on: “Mother says the greatest love has often commenced with a very decided aversion.”
“I must marry John Dinsmore, but I shall hate him till the day I die!” sobbed Jess, vehemently.
They have been so absorbed in their conversation that neither of the girls noted that Mr. Moore had made a tour of the grounds and entered the best room by the side door, and stood by the open window, looking out at them, screened by the heavy, white curtains.
He had heard the last words of that conversation, and stepped back from the open window, with a very strange pallor upon his face, but it soon gave place to the cynical smile that played about his lips.
“Woman-like, she is not disposed to lose the Dinsmore fortune,” he muttered. “She is worldly enough for that, childlike though she appears,” and he turns on his heel and walks as noiselessly out of the room and out of the house as he has entered.
There is a sneering expression on his handsome, cold face.
“Yes, she is like that other one,” he thinks, “willing to barter herself for glittering gold and the pleasures it may bring,” and he thinks of the lines which he applies to all womankind:
“Away, away; you’re all the same,