a mocking insult. Your letter, torn
to pieces, was returned to you without a word--insult for insult! You
felt no shame that I should so rudely reject your pity. Why should you?
Rejected pity is not rejected love. The man was not less old because he
was not reconciled to age."

This construction of her tender penitence--this explanation of his
bitter scorn--took Caroline Montfort wholly by surprise. From what
writhing agonies of lacerated self-love came that pride which was but
self-depreciation? It was a glimpse into the deeper rents of his charred
and desolate being which increased at once her yearning affection and
her passionate despair. Vainly she tried to utter the feelings that
crowded upon her!--vainly, vainly! Woman can murmur, "I have injured
you--forgive!" when she cannot exclaim, "You disdain me, but love!"
Vainly, vainly her bosom heaved and her lips moved under the awe of his
flashing eyes and the grandeur of his indignant frown.

"Ah!" he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts with a sombre intensity of
passion that rendered him almost unconscious of her presence--"Ah!
I said to myself, 'Oh, she believes that she has been so mourned and
missed that my soul would spring back to her false smile; that I could
be so base a slave to my senses as to pardon the traitress because her
face was fair enough to haunt my dreams. She dupes herself; she is no
necessity to my existence--I have wrenched it from her power years, long
years ago! I will show her, since again she deigns to remember me, that
I am not so old as to be grateful for the leavings of a heart.

"I will love another--I will be beloved. She shall not say with secret
triumph, 'The old man dotes in rejecting me'"

"Darrell, Darrel--unjus--cruel kill me rather than talk thus!"

He heeded not her cry. His words rolled on in that wonderful, varying
music which, whether in tenderness or in wrath, gave to his voice a
magical power--fascinating, hushing, overmastering human souls.

"But--you have the triumph; see, I am still alone! I sought the world of
the young--the marriage mart of the Beautiful once more. Alas! if my eye
was captured for a moment, it was by something that reminded me of you.
I saw a faultless face, radiant with its virgin blush; moved to it,
I drew near-sighing, turned away; it was not you! I heard the silvery
laugh of a life fresh as an April morn. 'Hark!' I said, 'is not that
the sweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled? L