“Pshaw!” said he, after kindling his cigar with a few vigorous whiffs, “what’s the use of being foolish?  My aunt was never diffident about telling her story, and why should I hesitate to tell mine?  The young lady’s name,—­we’ll call her simply Margaret.  She was a blonde, with hazel eyes and dark hair.  Perhaps you never heard of a blonde with hazel eyes and dark hair?  She was the only one I ever saw; and there was the finest contrast imaginable between her fair, fresh complexion, and her superb tresses and delicately-traced eyebrows.  She was certainly lovely, if not handsome; and—­such eyes!  It was an event in one’s life, Sir, just to look through those luminous windows into her soul.  That could not happen every day, be sure!  Sometimes for weeks she kept them turned from me, the ivory shutters half-closed, or the mystic curtains of reserve drawn within; then, again, when I was tortured with unsatisfied yearnings, and almost ready to despair, she would suddenly turn them upon me, the shutters thrown wide, the curtains away, and a flood of radiance streaming forth, that filled me so full of light and gladness, that I had no shadowy nook left in me for a doubt to hide in.  She must have been conscious of this power of expression.  She used it so sparingly, and, it seemed to me, artfully!  But I always forgave her when she did use it, and cherished resentment only when she did not.

“Margaret was shy and proud; I could never completely win her confidence; but I knew, I knew well at last, that her heart was mine.  And a deep, tender, woman’s heart it was, too, despite her reserve.  Without many words, we understood each other, and so——­Pshaw!” said Westwood, “my cigar is out!”

“On with the story!”

“Well, we had our lovers’ quarrels, of course.  Singular, what foolish children love makes of us!—­rendering us sensitive, jealous, exacting, in the superlative degree.  I am sure, we were both amiable and forbearing towards all the world besides; but, for the powerful reason that we loved, we were bound to misinterpret words, looks, and actions, and wound each other on every convenient occasion.  I was pained by her attentions to others, or perhaps by an apparent preference of a book or a bouquet to me.  Retaliation on my part and quiet persistence on hers continued to estrange us, until I generally ended by conceding everything, and pleading for one word of kindness, to end my misery.

“I was wrong,—­too quick to resent, too ready to concede.  No doubt, it was to her a secret gratification to exercise her power over me; and at last I was convinced that she wounded me purposely, in order to provoke a temporary estrangement, and enjoy a repetition of her triumph.

“It was at a party; the thing she did was to waltz with a man whom she knew I detested, whom I knew she could not respect, and whose half-embrace, as he whirled her in the dance, almost put murder into my thoughts.