Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/273

 "But Mary did not suit me," faltered the unhappy Willis, "I could not love her; she was amiable certainly, but quite without the charm, the power that you have, Miss Monteneros. You would give an interest to my home that it has never had, and the gloom—"

"Say no more, Mr. Willis," said Rachel gravely; "you can hardly expect that I should have accepted your proposal under any circumstances, and we know each other so little, that my refusal can give you but little pain. But think of the avowal you are now making; you have sought sympathy far and wide, and paraded sorrow in all directions, and yet you tell me that the Mary whose loss has been bewailed with such ostentation, 'did not suit you,' you could not love her. Oh! where is Truth? am I never to find it? I can bear artifice in the frivolities and gauds of the world, it is all artificial in itself, all heartless—but sorrow should be as true as it is sacred. Falseness there, appals and disgusts me."

She was trembling with excitement, but she