You thus perceive what
a forlorn object is before you--a rejected man and a cripple!"
"Miss Burton refused you!" exclaimed Ida in utter amazement. "You
were but a cold wooer, I imagine," she added reproachfully, and
she rose from the seat and stood aloof from him.
"You know well, Miss Ida," he said earnestly, "that a falsehood
would be impossible in this place, and I assure you I honestly did
the best I could. We have plighted our faith in a friendship that
will be a brother's love on my part, but she said solemnly that
she would regard offers of marriage from me, now or at any future
time, as an insult. In brief, she has at last told me her story.
Her lover is dead, and it was because she detected certain resemblances
in my appearance to him that she looked at me sometimes in the
way you described. I had surmised as much before, but at one time
hoped that this accidental resemblance might give me a vantage-ground
in winning her from a past that I knew must have been very sad
indeed. My resemblance was only an outward one, the man himself
was immeasurably my superior, and on the principle of contrast alone
Jennie Burton could never think of me. But her love for Harrold
Fleetwood is her life.
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