“That was all there was to know! And I am sorry, I am indignant, that my friends, in mistaken kindness, have betrayed this to you. I—I—was forgetting it in this new life with you—only it came back bitterly this morning when Jessie told me—that—she—will be married to him—in July!”
“And you, Leola, did you hear that news without a pang? Has your heart grown callous?”
“Spare me, papa!” and the golden head was buried on his breast, while heaving sobs shook his daughter’s form from head to feet—sobs that seemed to burst her very heart in twain.
Had her heart grown callous? Oh, no, the pity of it, that she could not deny she had given her love, irrevocably, to another woman’s lover—to one unworthy her lightest thought.
“A honeyed heart for the honeycomb,
And the humming bee flies home.
“A heavy heart in the honey-flower,
And the bee has had his hour.”
Alston Mead let her head rest in his arms until the storm of tears spent itself naturally; then, as she began to grow calmer, he exclaimed, angrily:
“Curses on the woman whose malice has culminated in this past year of sorrow; whose memory must always darken your life, even when the shadow shall be removed.”