ey fall upon a woman's heart.

"What is the matter, Zillah? Why do you moan and droop in this fashion?"
said the General, quite unconscious of the pang he had given.

The woman looked up; her eyes were heavy with pain, and a scarcely
perceptible quiver stirred her mouth.

"He sold me, and I lived; this cannot kill me either," she murmured
drearily.

"Oh," said the General, smiling, for he began to divine the cause of her
stricken attitude. "But remember, Zillah, you were not my _first_ love.
I was no boy when we met, and it was of boyish dreams that I spoke."

CHAPTER LVIII.

GENERAL HARRINGTON'S TEMPTATION.

Zillah drew a deep breath, and raised herself up, like a panther which a
ball has grazed. A wild illumination shot over her face, and seizing the
General's hands, she kissed them passionately.

"Foolish creature," said the General, soothed in the depths of his
vanity by this devotion.

"You did love me," she said, with a wistful look; "you did love me?"

"Yes--yes."

"And, it is all over?"

He looked down into her face. No girl of sixteen, in her first love
quarrel, ever wore a look so full of anxiety, so tremulous with hope and
doubt.

"Oh, I cannot say that, Zillah. There is something piquant, even
picturesque, about you, that one does not readily forget, or ever
dislike; besides, real earnest love is better worth having, after the
domestic treason which I have just discovered."

Again the woman's eyes blazed forth their sudden joy. She arose from his
feet, restless and eager.

"She has wronged you--she has embittered my life. I was your slave--let
her become so. Then shall we both have vengeance!"

"And beggary with it," answered the General, bitterly. "No, no, Zillah,
I am not so fond of vengeance as that; besides, hers is only a sin of
feeling, and she seems to have suffered for it."

The woman turned white, till the dusky shadows under her eyes seemed
black by contrast.

"A sin of feeling!" she almost shrieked, seizing the vellum book, and
turning over the crushed leaves rapidly with her trembling hands. "You
have not read all. You have only glanced at passages, perhaps!"

"And they have been sufficiently unpleasant. I do not care to search
farther!"

Zillah still turned over the leaves, tearing them more than once in her
rude haste. Her fierce eyes glanced from passage to passage. At length,
like a hawk pouncing upon its prey, she opened the book wide, and
pressed her hand