The Crooked Stick by Rolf Boldrewood — Read

Even in the first flush and transport of her love-dream Pollie could not wholly divest herself of the dread that Bertram Devereux might in England have loved with all the depth of his nature some one who even now had claims upon him. In vain she asked herself why such a thought should have passed through her mind. She could not tell. But, to her deep unrest, it remained to arise and torment her at intervals, like an unquiet spirit. On the subject of his feminine correspondence she had noticed, as she thought, a departure from his usual calmness, a studied air of carelessness. What if her surmises should be true, that he was either engaged or had been the victim of one of those absorbing, soul-engrossing attachments which leave the heart of man a burnt-out volcano -- barren, lifeless, dead to all succeeding influences? She would ask him. The torment of doubt on such a subject was too acute for endurance. Yet so far had she softened towards him, so far was her whole nature in a malleable state, that if he had but made frank confession she could have forgiven him.

And one day accident led up to the subject of previous attachment. Having disclaimed, on her part, the slightest tenderness in the past to living man, she looked her lover full in the face, as was her wont when aroused, and said --