It was now I learned for the first time that John Haughton loved me.  When it became generally understood that William and I were no longer engaged, John came forward.  I do not know what he, so good, so high-minded, saw in me; but certainly he loved me with a true affection.  When he avowed it, a strange joy seized me; I felt that now I held in my hand the key of William’s destiny.  Now I should not lose my hold on him; we could not drift apart in the tide of life.  As John’s bride, John’s wife, there must always be an intimate connection between us.  So I yielded with well-feigned tenderness to my lover’s suit,—­only stipulating, that, as some time must elapse before our marriage, no one should know of our attachment,—­not even William, or his mother,—­nor, on my part, any of my uncle’s family.  He made no objection; I believe he even took a romantic pleasure in the concealment.  He liked to see me moving about in society, and to feel that there was a tie between us that none dreamed of but ourselves.  Poor John! he deserved better of Fate than to be the tool of my revenge!

William came home, soon after our engagement, for his annual visit.  He was succeeding rather better than his dismal fancies had once prognosticated.  He was very often at our house,—­very much my friend.  I saw through all that clearly enough; I knew he loved me a hundred-fold more passionately than in our earlier days; and the knowledge was to me as a cool draught to one who is perishing of thirst.  I did all in my power to enhance his love; I sang bewildering melodies to him; I talked to him of the things he liked, and that roused his fine intellect to the exercise of its powers.  I rode with him, danced with him; nor did I omit to let him see the admiration with which others of his sex regarded me.  I was well aware that a man values no jewel so highly as that which in a brilliant setting calls forth the plaudits of the crowd.  I talked to him often of his prospects and hopes; his ambition, all selfish as it was, fascinated me by its pride and daring.  “Ah, William!” I sometimes thought, “you made a deadly mistake when you cast me off!  You will never find another who can so enter, heart and soul, into all your brilliant projects!”

He came to me, one morning, rather earlier than his wont.  I was reading, but laid aside my book to greet him.

“What have you there, Juanita?  Some young-ladyish romance, I suppose.”

“Not at all,—­it is a very rational work; though I presume you will laugh at it, because it contains a little sentiment,—­you are grown so hard and cold, of late.”

“Do you think so?” he asked, with a look that belied the charge.

He took up the volume, and, glancing through it, read now and then a sentence.

“What say you to this, Juanita?  ’If we are still able to love one who has made us suffer, we love him more than ever.’  Is that true to your experience?”

“No,” I answered, for I liked at times to approach the topic which was always uppermost in my mind, and to see his perfect unconsciousness of it.  “If any one had made me suffer, I should not stop to inquire whether I were able to love him still or not; I should have but one thought left,—­revenge!”