She could not bear to look at Jessie, his jubilant betrothed, sitting there in her pretty fashionable gown and fluffy flaxen locks in a wavy aureole over her white brow. She wished secretly that the girl would go away and leave her alone with her wounded heart.
But Jessie went on, eagerly:
“When I consent to forgive him for this I shall scold him roundly, you may be sure, Leola, and I shall pretend to him that after that little fainting fit you came around all right, and despised him for his duplicity, and vowed you would never see him again. He shall not think, the vain creature, that you wore the willow an hour for his sake. I will pretend you had other lovers to take his place. That will be true, for there is Mr. Bennett, who adores you, although you have flouted him so badly. As for me, if I were in your place I’d marry Bennett out of hand, to show Chester Olyphant how little I cared about him! That would take the conceit out of him quicker than anything you could do!”
So she twittered on artfully until Leola’s lovely face grew crimson with shame at her own weakness in caring so much for one so unworthy.
Without saying one word, her somber eyes turned to the setting sun; she writhed with secret shame that Jessie could think she cared so much for her frivolous lover. Oh, if she could only tear this pain from her heart; only smile again as before this cruel blow that had nearly struck her dead with its agony.
As Jessie chattered on, she began to feel a passionate contempt for the man as the pretty blonde depicted him, shallow, vain, unscrupulous.
“Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldering string:
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing!”
With sudden angry passion, her dark eyes flashing, she turned upon the artful girl:
“Please speak no more to me on that subject, Jessie. You weary me. I despise the man. I wish never to hear his name again!” she cried, bitterly, and her weakness seemed to fall from her, in passionate contempt.