"Matilda," eagerly exclaimed the youth, advancing close to her, and gazing into her dark eyes, "you are drawing a picture."
"No, Gerald," she replied calmly, "I am merely supposing a case. Could you find no excuse for a man acting under a sense of so much injury?—would you still call him an assassin, if, with such provocation, he sought to destroy the hated life of one who had thus injured him?"
Gerald paused, apparently bewildered.
"Tell me, dearest Gerald," and her fair and beautiful hand caught and pressed his—"would you still bestow upon one so injured the degrading epithet of assassin?"
"Assassin? most undoubtedly I would. But why this question, Matilda?"
The features of the American assumed a changed expression; she dropped the hand she had taken the instant before, and said, disappointedly:
"I find, then, my philosophy is totally at fault."
"Wherein, Matilda?" anxiously asked Gerald.
"In this, that I have not been able to make you a convert to my opinions."
"And these are—?" again questioned Gerald, his every pulse throbbing with intense emotion.