born."

Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.

"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under
their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition?
Is it to love you?"

For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.

"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I
thought God might permit me some day to love you."

"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.

"No."

"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying
even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my
father's sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"

Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.

"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight
flush. "I have believed you never did."

He raised his eyes again to her face.

"I loved my father above everything," faltered Vesta. "I saw no man,
besides, admiring my father."

"Then I displaced no man's right, coveting your image. Sometimes it
seemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. I
do not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in
nature, repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest,
delighted my childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself and
man; at last a beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul,
and it could never expel her glorious presence. All things became
subordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian,
or I should have become utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for what
was my wealth when I could not enter her father's house! I am here by a
destiny now; the power that called you to this room, so unexpectedly to
me, has borne us onward to the secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare I
go further?"

She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say something
that should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but the
possibility of marrying him was too tremendous to reply.

"This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feel
that it is to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness as
well. You have expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought
of me has ever lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever done so?
Though I almost dreamed it had, because you filled my life so many years
with your rich image, I thought you might have felt me, like an