“It was his hand,” continued Vane, sternly, “which felled me to the earth, when I accidentally encountered him on this very spot. Let that pass. Helen Gra-hame, you loved that man. Yet you knowingly and deliberately employed all your stratagems, and turned upon me the full blaze of your charms, to capture my heart.”
She shuddered and cowered down.
“Your eye it was that sought mine, and when it encountered it, rested there. Your voice echoed mine—your smile was set playing for me—your hand rested on my arm, whenever opportunity offered. You were bland and tender to me, and coy by turns. I was never in your presence but you made me conscious of it by those peculiar artifices by which women attract men to their side. Loving another, Helen Grahame, you acted thus to me.”
“It is unmanly to taunt me thus!” she ejaculated, in hoarse, quivering accents.
“Unmanly!” he echoed; “was it not unmaidenly in you, with your heart safely lodged in another’s keeping, to make so desperate a venture for mine——and for what? To make it a toy, to break it, and cast it aside as worthless, even as a child does a bauble!”
He paused.
He could hear her hysteric breathing, but no pity was stirred in his merciless heart.
“Were you not young, beautiful, of proud birth? Ought you to wonder that you succeeded in your design—-that you have won my heart——”
“It is false! it is false! it is basely untrue!” she gasped, vehemently.
“I swear to its truth! or why do I care to see or speak with you again,” he replied with animation. “I repeat it, Helen Grahame—I love you. You exerted yourself to accomplish that achievement, and you succeeded, having no love to give back in return. What atonement have you to offer to me for having destroyed the brightest hope in my life?”