to say, "let me remind you of our unhappy
betrothal. You were a child, I a boy. Our parents are responsible for
that. They meant well. Let us not blame them.

"Then came our marriage by the death-bed of your father. You were
excited, and very naturally so. You used bitter words to me then
which I have never forgotten. Every taunt and insult which you then
uttered has lived in my memory. Why? Not because I am inclined to
treasure up wrong. No. Rather because you have taken such extreme
pains to keep alive the memory of that event. You will remember that
in every one of those letters which you have written to me since I
left England there has not been one which has not been filled with
innuendoes of the most cutting kind, and insults of the most galling
nature. My father loved you. I did not. But could you not, for his
sake, have refrained from insult? Why was it necessary to turn what
at first was merely coolness into hate and indignation?

"I speak bitterly about those letters of yours. It was those which
kept me so long in India. I could not come to see my father because
you were here, and I should have to come and see you. I could not
give him trouble by letting him know the truth, because he loved you.
Thus you kept me away from him and from my home at a time when I was
longing to be here; and, finally, to crown your cruelty, you
sedulously concealed from me the news of my father's illness till it
was too late. He died; and then--then you wrote that hideous letter,
that abomination of insult and vindictiveness, that cruel and
cowardly stab, which you aimed at a heart already wrung by the grief
of bereavement! In the very letter which you wrote to tell me of that
sudden and almost intolerable calamity you dared to say that my
father--that gentle and noble soul, who so loved you and trusted
you--that he, the stainless gentleman, the soul of honor--_he_ had
cheated _you_, and that his death was the punishment inflicted by
Providence for his sin; that he had made a cunning and dishonest plan
to get you for the sake of your fortune; that _I_ had been his
accomplice; and that by his death the vengeance of Divine justice was
manifested on both of us!"

Deep and low grew the tones of Lord Chetwynde's voice as he spoke
these words--deep and low, yet restrained with that restraint which
is put over the feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide
that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them
bur