ich you had a right to claim from the
sister of the man who seeks to make you his wife."

"No, sir; your sister's sneers, and the petty slights and persecutions
for which I am indebted to her friend, Miss Sutherland, have not
sufficient importance to affect me in any degree. My decision is
based upon the unfortunate fact that I do not love you."

"No woman can withstand such devotion as I bring you, and time would
soon soften and deepen your feelings."

"Sir, you unduly flatter yourself. Neither time nor eternity would
change me, and you would do well to remember that it is my voice,
sir,--not my hand and heart,--that I offer for sale."

"Your stubborn rejection is explicable only by the supposition that
you have deceived me,--that you have already bartered away the heart I
long to call my own."

"I am a miller's child,--you a millionaire, but permit me to remind
you that I allow no imputation on my veracity. Why should I condescend
to deceive you?"

She petulantly snatched her scarf from the fingers that still stroked
it caressingly; but an instant later a singular change swept over her
countenance, and pressing her hands to her heart, she said in a proud,
almost exultant tone,--

"Although I deny your right to question me upon this subject, you are
thoroughly welcome to know that I love one man so entirely, so
deathlessly, that the bare thought of marrying any one else sickens my
soul."

Mr. Minge turned pale, and grasped the carved balustrade against which
he rested.

"O Salome! you have trifled."

"No, sir. Take that back. I never stoop to trifling; and the curse of
my life has been my almost fatal earnestness of purpose. If I ever
deliberated one moment concerning the expediency of clothing myself
first with your aristocratic name, afterwards with satin, velvet, and
diamonds,--if I ever silenced the outcry of my heart long enough to
ask myself whether _gilded misery_ was not the least torturing type of
the epidemic wretchedness,--at least I kept my parley with Mammon to
myself; and if you obstinately cherished hopes of final success, they
sprang from your vanity, not my dissimulation. Mark you, I here set up
no claim to sanctity,--for indeed my sins are 'thick as leaves in
Vallombrosa'; but my pedigree does not happen to link me with
Sapphira, and deceit is not charged to me in the real Doomsday Book.
Theft would be more possible for me than falsehood, for while both are
labelled 'wicked,' I could nev