"Oh, Miss Sibyl—dear Miss Sibyl! what have I done? Oh, I never, never meant to offend you, or stand in your path; as Heaven hears me, I did not! Tell me, only tell me in what I have offended, and I will never do it again," said Christie, clasping her hands in increasing terror and childlike simplicity.
"What have you done? Have you really the effrontery to stand there and ask me such a question?"
"Miss Sibyl, I do not know—indeed, indeed, I do not know!" exclaimed Christie, earnestly.
In all the storm of anger and jealousy that raged in her soul, a look of superb scorn curled the lips of Sibyl.
"You do not know! Oh, wondrous innocence! angelic simplicity! Must I despise as well as hate you? Listen, then, since I must speak my shame, and answer me truly, as you hope for salvation. Promise."
"I promise!"
"Swear to answer me truly, by all you hold dear on earth! by your hopes of heaven!"
"I swear! Oh, Sibyl, speak!" cried Christie, wrought up to an agony of terror and excitement by her wild words.
"Then, and may Heaven's heaviest curse fall upon him if I conjecture truly—has Willard Drummond dared to speak of love to you?"
Pale, trembling, terror-stricken, Christie's tongue clove to the roof of her mouth; had her life depended on it, no sound could have escaped her quivering lips.