Mr.McLean replied, quite honestly, "I am not sure that I did not always like you best," but that hurt her, and he had to unsay the words.
"I was a thoughtless fool ten years ago," he said, bitterly, and Miss Ailie's answer came strangely from such timid lips.

"Yes, you were!" she exclaimed, passionately, and all the wrath, long pent up, with very different feelings, in her gentle bosom, against the man who should have adored her Kitty, leapt at that reproachful cry to her mouth and eyes, and so passed out of her forever..