She had let him read the guarded secret of her heart, only to hear his reply--that she was not his ideal of womanhood.

She had asked for bread--he had given her a stone.

She had lavished her love at his feet--he had coolly stepped aside.

She had lowered her pride, humiliated herself, all in vain.
"No woman," she said to herself, "would ever pardon such a slight or forgive such a wrong." At first she wept as though her heart would break--tears fell like rain from her eyes, tears that seemed to burn as they fell; then after a time pride rose and gained the ascendancy.

She, the courted, beautiful woman, to be so humiliated, so slighted! She, for whose smile the noblest in the land asked in vain, to have her almost offered love so coldly refused! She, the very queen of love and beauty, to be so spurned! When the passion of grief had subsided, when the hot angry glow of wounded pride died away, she raised her face to the night-skies.
"I swear," she said, "that I will be revenged--that I will take such vengeance on him as will bring his pride down far lower than he has brought mine.