and that she will
make him wretched too. But what does it all matter? Her pride is to be
wounded, her self-love humiliated, and every other consideration must
yield to that. She is ready to commit perjury, to swear to love and
honour a man who is no more to her than that peasant walking along the
road. She is ready to degrade herself and risk her soul by a mercenary
marriage sooner than bear that wound to pride!"

"Go on!" Kate said, bitterly; "it is well to have one's heart lacerated
sometimes, I suppose. Pray go on."

"I intend to go on. You have been used to queening it all your life--to
being flattered, and indulged, and pampered to the top of your bent, and
it will do you good. When you are this man's miserable wife, you shall
never say Father Francis might have warned me--Father Francis might have
saved me. You have ruled here with a ring and a clatter; you have been
pleased to dazzle and bewilder the simple people of St. Croix, to see
yourself looked up to as a sort of goddess. Your rank, and
accomplishments, and beauty--we are talking plain truth now, Miss
Danton--all these gifts that God has bestowed upon you so bountifully,
you have misused. It doesn't seem so to you, does it? You think you have
been very good, very charitable, very condescending. I don't deny that
you have done good, that you have been a sort of guardian angel to the
poor and the sick; but what was your motive? Was it that which makes
thousands of girls, as young, and rich, and handsome as yourself, resign
everything for the humble garb and lowly duties of a Sister of Charity?
Oh, no! You liked to be idolized, to be venerated, and looked up to as
an angel upon earth. That pride of yours which induces you to sell
yourself for so many thousand pounds per annum was at the bottom of it
all. You want to hold a foremost place in the great battle of life--you
want all obstacles to give way before you. It can't be; and your whole
life is a failure."

"Go on," Kate reiterated, never stirring, never looking at him, and
white as death.

"You have fancied yourself very good, very immaculate, and thanked
Heaven in an uplifted sort of way that you were not as other women,
false, and mean, and sordid. You wanted to walk through life in a
pathway of roses without thorns, to a placid death, and a heritage of
glory in Heaven. The trials of common people were not for you; sorrow,
and disappointment, and suffering were to pass Miss Danton by. You were
so g