"You are excited—"he began, slowly.
She interrupted him—"Who would not be? I am not a stone!"
"Nobody said that you were, or ought to be," smiling a little. "I was about to say that the displeasure you feel is perfectly natural—just what any woman with a heart would experience in the circumstances. But let us investigate before we condemn. What is your ground of complaint against my friend and your betrothed? Did he ever tell you that you were his first and only love?"
"I do not know that he asserted it in so many words," she replied, with a vivid blush. "But I certainly inferred as much from what he has said."
"Every woman's inference is the same when she listens to a declaration of affection. Who but a fool would preface such by a confession of how many times he had rehearsed it to other ears? Few men reach the age of twenty-five without having had two or three grandes passions. I do not maintain, as a gentleman did once in my hearing, when taxed with being engaged in his fortieth love-suit, that in this, as in most other things, practice makes perfect. But I hold that you cannot accuse Roy of deceiving you, unless he has declared expressly that he had never loved or wooed until he met you. Happy are those who are not visited by the ghosts of by-gone—and, as they deemed, buried—affections upon their bridal eves! Ghosts that are hard enough to lay, as many a miserable married, not mated one can testify."
"None such shall stand between me and him whom I marry!" cried Jessie, vehemently. "If Roy Fordham once loved—if he still regrets this girl—has one pang of compunction in the review of her fidelity and her sorrow; if he repents, never so slightly, his relinquishment of her upon insufficient cause—he shall go back to her. I will have a whole heart, or I will quit him, a pauper in love. Divided allegiance is worse than desertion."
"Be assured of one thing!" returned Orrin, emphatically. "Roy Fordham 'regrets' no past action of his own. His judgment is as calm as his measures are decided. If he suffers his heart to go out of his keeping, he does it in the persuasion that he could not act more prudently, more in accordance with his best interests, than to intrust it to her whom he has chosen. But should he, nevertheless, discover, from subsequent developments, that he was mistaken, he would recall affections and troth without weak hesitation. If Miss Sanford's story be true (which, please observe, I am far from admitting), we may still rest content in the knowledge that he pursued what he thought was the wisest course—performed what seemed to him a simple and imperative duty. He is, of all men I know, the most clear-headed and conscientious. If his ideas upon certain subjects appear to me to be over-strict, if his conduct, in cases that would be trying emergencies to me, looks like an exercise of superhuman resolution or self-denial, I do not, therefore, question his wisdom or my failings. His standard of right is so elevated, his views of duty are based upon—"
"Don't make labored excuses for him which you feel, in your soul, are paltry sophisms!" burst out Jessie, impatiently. "Is it your belief that he was ever betrothed to this girl? And, if so, did he cast her off upon the barbarous pretext Hester Sanford named? I have tried to think it all out," she continued, putting her hand to her head, like one dazed or stunned, "but nothing is fixed and clear. He was at the seashore two summers ago, after he visited Dundee. He did go to B—— the following winter—twice—both times to attend the weddings of friends, he told me. These things he made no secret of. That does not look like guilt. And yet—Tell me what to believe—how to act!"
"If I were in possession of the exact truth, you should have had it before now. I am as ignorant as yourself of all except the facts you have stated. He has friends—relatives whom he esteems—in B——. I recollect that he was with them at the sea shore late in his vacation, and that he spent Christmas before last in the city which is their home. This is the extent of my actual knowledge touching this mystery. He is reticent in the extreme with respect to his personal affairs. I never heard your name; never suspected that he was not heart-whole prior to my first visit to Dundee. I can only judge him in this, as in every case, by what I know of his principles and past conduct. He is incapable of what he would consider a dishonorable, much less a base deed! Try and trust him; forget this tale which may be a fiction, out-and-out, and hope for the best!"
"Christmas before last!" murmured Jessie, in stifled accents. "He was corresponding with me then! He had told my father that he meant—Oh!" stopping short, and stamping her foot with feverish energy upon the frozen earth—"Is there no way of ending this horrible suspense? no one who can put me out of this pain? I would give my right hand if I might stand face to face with Roy Fordham, for ten minutes! just long enough to bring my accusation, and hear his defence!"