"
"Her heart!" answered Westervelt contemptuously. "That troublesome
organ (as she had hitherto found it) would have been kept in its due
place and degree, and have had all the gratification it could fairly
claim. She would soon have established a control over it. Love had
failed her, you say. Had it never failed her before? Yet she
survived it, and loved again,--possibly not once alone, nor twice
either. And now to drown herself for yonder dreamy philanthropist!"
"Who are you," I exclaimed indignantly, "that dare to speak thus of
the dead? You seem to intend a eulogy, yet leave out whatever was
noblest in her, and blacken while you mean to praise. I have long
considered you as Zenobia's evil fate. Your sentiments confirm me in
the idea, but leave me still ignorant as to the mode in which you
have influenced her life. The connection may have been indissoluble,
except by death. Then, indeed,--always in the hope of God's infinite
mercy,--I cannot deem it a misfortune that she sleeps in yonder grave!"
"No matter what I was to her," he answered gloomily, yet without
actual emotion. "She is now beyond my reach. Had she lived, and
hearkened to my counsels, we might have served each other well. But
there Zenobia lies in yonder pit, with the dull earth over her.
Twenty years of a brilliant lifetime thrown away for a mere woman's
whim!"
Heaven deal with Westervelt according to his nature and deserts!--
that is to say, annihilate him. He was altogether earthy, worldly,
made for time and its gross objects, and incapable--except by a sort
of dim reflection caught from other minds--of so much as one
spiritual idea.
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