I was bewitched; indistinct
visions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching with
concourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. The
price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been
princely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven
would have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, the
more successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were my
temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose temple
it was born."
Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.
"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under
their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition?
Is it to love you?"
For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.
"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I
thought God might permit me some day to love you."
"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.
"No."
"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying
even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my
father's sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"
Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.
"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight
flush. "I have believed you never did."
He raised his eyes again to her face.
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