Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/318

 "I could have sworn to it," he groaned. "I never doubted from that day, till the afternoon when Millicent confessed that she had written the letter herself—imitating your writing after much practice—'to disgust me with you,' as she said, 'because she loved me, and felt she must die if I didn't belong to her.' Well," and Sir Ian laughed bitterly—"the rest was easy, for she was a clever woman, and I was a mad fool in those days. After that, she had her way. Nothing mattered, I thought. You know what happened. I never wrote to you again. I sent back two letters unopened, and—I married my cousin Millicent, as soon as I could. I fancied her a sweet, saintly sort of being, and I told myself I ought to think I was lucky if she liked me enough to take me as I was, burnt up with love for a girl I believed unworthy. She realized that I didn't care for her in the right way, but she said she would do her best, and win my whole heart. What true happiness could we have expected?

"She told me everything, sitting there by the View Tower, breaking down and sobbing, begging me to hear her excuses, and how she had been dying for me, how she had been tempted—when I interrupted. I don't know what I said, but I remember crying out that she had done a thing no man could forgive—that she'd made me a dishonourable brute to the one woman I ever loved; that I'd never cared for her, never been happy with her for a moment, and that now I