It was some minutes before she could reply; then, lifting her head, and tossing the hair from her forehead, she displayed features expressive only of the deepest grief, and said, in broken accents, "What have you done? Oh, how can you ask? She is gentle, and amiable, and affectionate. She loves everybody, and trusts everybody. You have _deceived_ her, and _I_ was the cause of it. Oh, how, how could you do it!"
Ben exclaimed, "She will get over it." "Get over _what_!" said Gertrude; "her love for you? Perhaps so; I know not how deep it is. But, think of her happy, trusting nature, and how it has been betrayed! Think how she believed your flattering words, and how hollow they were, all the while! Think how her confidence has been abused! how that fatherless and motherless girl, who had a claim to the sympathy of all the world, has been taught a lesson of distrust."
"I didn't think you would take it so," said Ben.
"How else could I view it?" asked Gertrude; "could you expect that such a course would win my respect?"
"You take it very seriously, Gertrude; such flirtations are common."
"I am sorry to hear it," said Gertrude. "To my mind, unversed in the ways of society, it is a dreadful thing to trifle thus with a human heart. Whether Kitty loves you is not for me to say; but what opinion, alas! will she have of your sincerity?"
"I think you're rather hard, Miss Gertrude, when it was my love for you that prompted my conduct."
"Perhaps I am," said Gertrude. "It is not my place to censure; I speak only from the impulse of my heart. One orphan girl's warm defence of another is but natural. Perhaps she views the thing lightly, and does not _need_ an advocate; but, oh, Mr. Bruce, do not think so meanly of my sex as to believe that one woman's heart can be won to love and reverence by the author of another's betrayal! She were less than woman who could be so false to her sense of right and honour."
"Betrayal!--Nonsense! you are very high-flown."
"So much so, Mr. Bruce, that half-an-hour ago I could have wept that you should have bestowed your affection where it met with no requital; and if now I wept for the sake of her whose ears have listened to false professions, and whose peace has, to say the least, been _threatened_ on my account, you should attribute it to the fact that my sympathies have not been exhausted by contact with the world."