CROSS-PURPOSES.
Violet recoiled with a cry of horror; she could not speak; the very thought was enough to make her heart sink with a feeling of sickening aversion.
“You are mad!” she panted at last, when she could find words. “This is an insult, and I will have you punished for it!”
A smile stole over Gilbert Warrington’s thin lips.
“Do not imagine for one moment that I care for you,” he said, harshly. “I have never loved any woman in all my life save your mother, and she scorned me. Listen, Violet, while I tell you my story in as few words as possible. Years ago, when I first met your mother, she and Harold Arleigh were living as happily as ideal lovers, just for all the world like romances one reads in old books. It was not the fashion then to debate the question, ‘Is marriage a failure?’ and Harold and Rosamond never once thought of such a thing. Their lives were perfectly happy. Then it was that I came to Yorke Towers; they lived there at the time. You know that the place was known then only as The Towers; but when the Yorkes came into possession they rechristened it Yorke Towers, and so it has remained ever since. Well, I was the overseer on the plantation—not a very elevated position, you will say; but I was treated with great kindness by both your father and mother—too kind was she, in fact, for I soon awoke to the knowledge that I loved her!”
“Loved her? And she a married woman?”
Violet’s voice was full of surprise, not unmixed with scorn.
A strange expression flashed into Warrington’s eyes.
“Now, Violet, you need not look so horrified. I learned to love Rosamond Arleigh before I was aware of it, and when it was too late I awoke to the truth, and then I could not crush out the affection from my heart. It has lived and flourished ever since. But she is gone, and I can never hope to win her heart.”
“You would never have won her had she lived!” cried Violet, scornfully.