"Silence! I did love you once,--your cold heart can never guess how
well, how warmly. I would have loved on through trial and suffering
forever; no one could have made me believe anything against you;
nothing could have shaken my fidelity, or my faith in yours. It was
reserved for yourself to work my cure,--for your own lips to pronounce
the words that changed my love to cool contempt."

"Oh, Juanita," he cried, passionately, "will you always be so
vindictive? Will you forever remind me of that piece of insane folly?
Let it go,--it was a boy's whim, too silly to remember."

"You were no boy then," I answered. "You had a mature prudence,--a
careful thoughtfulness for self. Or if otherwise, in your case the
child was indeed father to the man."

"Your love is dead, then, I suppose?" he questioned, with a bitter
smile.

I handed him the book I had been reading. It was marked at these words:
"Love can excuse anything except meanness; but meanness kills love,
cripples even natural affection; without esteem, true love cannot
exist."

William raised his head with an air of proud defiance. "And in what
sense," he asked, "do such words apply to me?"

"You are strangely obtuse," I said. "You see no trace of yourself in
that passage--no trace of meanness in the man who cast off the
penniless orphan, with her whole heart full of love for him, yet pleads