"You cannot conceive I have had any real love for you?" he exclaimed,
dubiously.
"You have seen me, and desired me for your wife; that is all," said
Vesta, "that I can imagine. Lawless power could do that anywhere. To be
an obedient wife is the lot of woman; but love, such as you have some
glimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladdening, yet so
free, that the captivity you set me in to make me sing to you will
divide us like the wires of a cage."
"There is no bird I ever caught," said Meshach Milburn, "that did not
learn to trust me. Your comparison does not, therefore, discourage me.
And you have already sung for me, the saddest day of your life!"
A slight touch of nature in this revelation of her strange suitor called
Vesta's attention to the study of him again. With her intelligence and
sense of higher worth coming to her rescue, she thought: "Let me see all
that is of this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to his
mercy."
As she recovered composure, however, she grew more beautiful in his
sight, her dark, peerless charms filling the room, her kindling eyes
conveying love, her skin like the wild plum's, and her raven brows and
crown of luxuriant hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of an
empress's throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, but the
energies of his character were all concentrated to secure it.
"Who _are_ you?" she asked, with a calm, searching look, cast from her
highest self-respect and alert intelligence.
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