"And the lady, Mrs. Harrington, does she know this?"
"Not a syllable. I have no fancy for hysterics, protestations, or fainting fits. The rôle of an injured husband, is not to my taste; and I should prefer that she base her complaints on my indifference, abandonment, infidelity, or whatever faults of that nature she pleases. I will take a trip to Paris, if that promises to facilitate matters."
"And, if I refuse?"
"Then the lady shall be quietly waited upon by my lawyer, and invited to leave my house. This book will not only be placed in evidence against her, but every line it contains shall be duplicated by thousands, and spread far and wide."
"Give me time—give me air. I cannot think or breathe!" answered James, struggling with himself amid a whirl of contending feelings, like a drowning man engulphed by a flood. "A few minutes, and I will speak again."
He arose, and walked unsteadily towards the library window, threw it open, and stepped out upon the balcony. There he strove to look the difficulty before him in the face—to meet the terrible temptation with courage. He dared not turn his thoughts, even for a moment, toward the possibility of the proposed divorce, but crushed it back resolutely, as if it had been a serpent attempting to charm his soul away. If a glow of delight had touched his heart with the first certainty of Mabel's love, it was gone now, quenched by a consciousness of the terrible dangers that were closing around her.
It was a bitter cold morning; all around him the earth lay sheeted with deep snow. The river was frozen over from shore to shore. Not a green thing was near, save the spruces and pines upon the shrouded lawn, and they drooped and moaned under a burden of cold whiteness, which the wind might disturb but fail to sweep away. The balcony was littered with slender icicles which had fallen from the gables above, and flashed out like shattered jewels from his impetuous footsteps as he trod them down, walking to and fro in the wild excitement that seized upon him. At another time he must have shuddered beneath the sharp wind that filled his hair and clothes with frost. But now, the fever in his blood burned too hotly not to feel the biting cold as a relief.
He leaned against a pillar of the balcony, shocked to the soul, and yet so indignant that the frozen particles that filled the air, flashed athwart his eyes like sparks of fire. The hand with which he strove to force back the painful rush of thought from his forehead, fell upon it like ice, but in a moment that too was burning. He tore off his cravat, and in vain exposed his bosom to the frost. He gathered handfuls of snow from where it had lodged in ridges on the stone balustrade, and pressed them to his forehead, hoping thus to slake the fever of his wild thoughts. A little time, and this fierce struggle must have killed him; for, not to have found some means of saving Mabel Harrington from the dangers that encompassed her, would have been a thousand deaths to him. Oh! how his bad angel toiled and struggled to fix that divorce upon his mind, as the best and only means of saving her. But the heart that swelled so tumultuously in his bosom, was honest and unselfish. He took hold of the temptation, firmly wrestled with, and hurled it aside, facing the right with heroic courage.
At last, his restless footsteps ceased; some new idea contracted his features, sweeping all the fire away. Slowly and steadily, like the beams of a star, thought followed thought, till his face grew luminous with generous resolution. The red fever had burned itself out on his forehead, leaving it pale and calm, while across his lips stole an expression so much more beautiful than a smile, that I cannot impress it upon the reader.