"I never loved you, Julian. No—never."
She shook herself free, drew back, pressed her clenched fists against her bosom. "You dare to tell me that—you!"
"I never loved you," he said.
Her face became white as that of a corpse. She drew on one side and said, "Go—and may you be hanged! I hate you. I would I were by to see you die."
CHAPTER LIX. A LAST CHANCE.
Julian was left alone. She watched Anthony depart, till he had disappeared round a turn of the road and a fall of the hill; then she cast herself upon the heather in a paroxysm of agony. She drove her fingers into the bushes of dwarf gorse, and the needles entered her flesh and drew the blood; but she heeded it not. The rough heather was against her cheek, a storm of sobs and tears shook and wetted the harsh, dry flowers. He did not love her! He never had loved her! She had fought against this conviction that, like a cold, gliding snake, had stolen into her heart and dripped its poison there.
Now she could resist it no more. It was not told her by Bessie—it was not a new conjecture formed on certain scribblings on the glass; it had been proclaimed by his own lips, and at a solemn moment when he would not lie—when he was on his way to death.
He had trifled with her heart, and he dared to reproach her! She had loved him before ever he had known Urith, and then he had shown her attention. Had she mistaken that attention for love? Had not her own flaming passion seen in the reflection it called up in him a real reciprocal flame?
After he was married she could not hide from her conscience that she had made a struggle to win back his heart—had disregarded the counsels of prudence and the teachings of religion in the furious resistance she had offered to the established fact that he had been given to another, and belonged to that other.