When she had quoted the words of _Priscilla_, the loveliest
maiden of Plymouth, she had meant them as applicable to her own
case--"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" They came back to him
with a fierce, hissing sound, mocking his despair. She had loved him
through all--this proud, beautiful, brilliant woman for whom men of
highest rank had sighed in vain. And, knowing her pride, her
haughtiness, he could guess exactly what her love had cost her, and that
all that followed had been a mockery. On that night her love had changed
to hate. On that night she had planned this terrible revenge. Her
offering of friendship had been a blind. He thought to himself that he
had been foolish not to see it. A thousand circumstances presented
themselves to his mind. This, then, was why Madaline had so
persistently--and, to his mind, so strangely--refused his love. This was
why she had talked incessantly of the distance between them--of her own
unworthiness to be his wife. He bad thought that she alluded merely to
her poverty, whereas it was her birth and parentage she referred to.
How cleverly, how cruelly Philippa had deceived them both--Philippa, his
old friend and companion, his sister in all but name! He could see now a
thousand instances in which Madaline and himself had played at cross
purposes--a thousand instances in which the poor girl had alluded to her
parent's sin, and he had thought she was speaking of her poverty.
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