“How very fierce!” he said, laughing.  “And your idea of revenge is—­what?  To stab him with your own white hand?”

“No!” I said, scornfully.  “To kill a person you hate is, to my mind, the most pitiful idea of vengeance.  What! put him out of the world at once?  Not so!  He should live,” I said, fixing my eyes upon him,—­“and live to suffer,—­and to remember, in his anguish, why he suffered, and to whose hand he owed it!”

It was a hateful speech, and would have repelled most men; for my life I dared not have made it before John.  But I knew to whom I was talking, and that he had no objection to a slight spice of diablerie.

“What curious glimpses of character you open to me now and then,” he said, thoughtfully.  “Not very womanly, however.”

“Womanly!” I cried.  “I wonder what a man’s notion of woman is!  Some soft, pulpy thing that thrives all the better for abuse? a spaniel that loves you more, the more you beat it? a worm that grows and grows in new rings as often as you cut it asunder?  I wonder history has never taught you better.  Look at Judith with Holofernes,—­Jael with Sisera,—­or if you want profane examples, Catherine de Medicis, Mademoiselle de Brinvilliers, Charlotte Corday.  There are women who have formed a purpose, and gone on steadily toward its accomplishment, even though, like that Roman girl,—­Tullia was her name?—­they had to drive over a father’s corpse to do it.”

“You have known such, perhaps,” said Richard.

“Yes,” I answered, with, a gentle smile, “I have.  They wished no harm, it might be, to any one, but people stood in their way.  It is as if you were going to the arbor after grapes, and there were a swarm of ants in the path.  You have no malice against the ants, but you want the grapes,—­so you walk on, and they are crushed.”

I was thinking of John and of his love, but William did not know that.  “You are a strange being!” he said, looking at me with a mixture of admiration and distrust.

“Ah!  Well, you see my race is somewhat anomalous,—­a blending of the Spaniard and the Yankee.  Come, I will be all Spanish for a time; bring me the guitar.  Now let me sing you a romance.”

I struck the tinkling chords, and began a sweet love-ditty.  Fixing my eyes on his, I made every word speak to his heart from mine.  I saw his color change, his eyes melt;—­when the song ended, he was at my feet.

I know not what he said; I only know it was passion, burning and intense.  Oh, but it was balm both to my love and hate to hear him!  I let him go on as long as he would,—­then I said, gently caressing his bright hair,—­

“You forget, dear William, all those lessons of prudence you taught me not so very long ago.”

He poured forth the most ardent protestations; he begged me to forget all that cold and selfish reasoning.  Long since he had wished to offer me his hand, but feared lest I should repel him with scorn.  Would I not pardon his former ingratitude, and return his love?