She looked up. "To serve me! how thankfully I would avail myself of such! I was hasty—unkind! Do not go yet!"
He sat down. "It is all so confused!" she said, apologetically. "You are engaged to Lelia Arnold, and do not love her:—yet you must have told her that you did!"
He colored, and did not reply.
"You are meditating a punishment for her—what has she done that you have not?"
"Falsehood—unprovoked falsehood is viler in a woman. I was driven to it."
"Viler in a woman—more despicable in a man! You should be above the petty vanity and ambition, that if cultivated, root up our better feelings. Selfishness, love of admiration, and in your case, pique, actuated her;—you have the bare plea of malice!"
"Miss Ross! malice!"
"Examine, and say if it is not so. Punishment, in this world, has cure for its object. Was this yours? or was it that she might endure the pain she had inflicted upon others?"
"Call it retribution."
"There is but one Retributive Being. He says 'Vengeance is mine!'"