"It was no lie. She never loved you!"
"She did!" he cried, hotly; "I swear she did. I saw it; knew it but a few hours since."
"You have seen her?" asked Frances.
"Seen her! Yes; and I wish to God I had died before seeing her," and he clasped his hands over his damp brow in an agony of grief.
"See," he said, presently, "are you not satisfied with my sufferings? Look here;" and he drew his hand across his forehead and temples, and showed the large drops that fell from them. "I loved her as my life. My life, do I say? She was more than life to me, and I have lost her; and this—this is your devil's work."
"Lost her!" echoed Frances, inquiringly.
He heeded her not; but walked the room with rapid strides, then gradually calmed again, and then again burst forth with the hopeless agony of his thoughts, as he recalled Amy's last words:
"It is too late, I am married."
"Aye," he said, despairingly, "too late to save us both; too late, indeed."
Frances could not listen calmly, or see unmoved the strong man's agony; but she never once repented the evil she had wrought, but rather gloried at heart in having so successfully separated him and Amy; and the more so now, because she saw how madly he loved her. She waited quietly, almost afraid to speak, until the paroxysm of grief had exhausted itself. Then she said, timidly,