Something of actual despair rung from his voice, he bowed his face with
its pained expression, and Honor believed him sincere, perhaps, after
all the man was beside himself she thought, he who had never before made
the most pardonable breach of etiquette or courtesy.

The jealousy that was the evident cause of his strongest utterance, was
perhaps, what any woman can forgive her lover's rival most easily, for
it gives a spice to love, so with a little appeal to her womanly
sympathies, Honor thawed out, and answered his miserable
self-condemnations in forgiving but reserved terms.

"Do not trouble yourself so," she said half consolingly. "I assure you,
your words have had no effect in the world on me; if I thought
differently of you, they would have meant more, but as it is, console
yourself that you have injured no one half so much, as you have
yourself."

The ambiguous words deceived him--he looked gladly up and exclaimed--

"You are an angel, Honor!" but he had not understood the deep meaning of
her thought, he did not know, that, when we love, truly and devotedly,
or even cherish and esteem some one, an unkind word or a cruel retort,
from those lips to us, makes a breach, which no forgiving phrases can
ever right again. When the heart that loves has been wounded by the hand
it adores, no remedy can ever fully heal the rankled spot, where the
poisoned arrow has lodged. We can forgive the injury of one, whom we
have never cherished nor loved, we can treat with indifference the
slights of those we care little about, but it takes an angel's mercy, an
infinite fortitude, a supernatural test of our moral strength to raise