Directly, James came back with the deed in his hand. The General took it, read it carefully section by section, folded it with studied deliberation; and taking up the journal, placed it in Harrington's hand with a forced smile and a scarcely perceptible bow.
As the book touched his hands, James Harrington grasped it with violence; a trembling fit seized upon him, and he shook like an aspen tree while carrying it to the fire. Opening the covers wide, he laid the fluttering pages down upon the flames, which darted through them like a nest of fiery vipers, and in an instant devoured poor Mabel Harrington's secret, over which the vellum covers writhed and curled like living things given up to torture.
Till the last fragment was consumed, James Harrington stood looking on, with the light falling upon his pale face, which revealed a depth of mournful tenderness that touched even that selfish old man with reverence. It seemed as if Mabel's heart had been given to the flames by his own hands. When all was consumed he turned away like one in a painful dream, and without speaking a word, left the room.
Two hours after, he quitted the house.
CHAPTER LXV.
WHO WAS LINA FRENCH?
James Harrington and Lina left the same roof within a few hours of each other, without warning or explanation. Was it strange that Mabel should be tortured with wild doubts, or that her son should believe the step-brother whom he had looked up to with such honest devotion, and the girl he had loved so truly, domestic conspirators who had been deceiving him all the time?
Poor Ralph! these doubts fell with cruel force on his generous nature. His confidence was all swept away—the best jewel of his life had fallen off. To him, love had no longer the holiness of truth. Household trust—faith in human goodness—all was disturbed. He was wild with indignation, torn with a thousand conflicting feelings; sometimes heart-broken with grief—again, reckless and defiant; then a spirit of bitter retaliation seized upon him. What was Lina, with her gentle affections and pretty reserves, that he should waste a life in regrets for her, while another, ardent, impassioned, and loving him madly, was pining to death for the affection he had thrown away so lavishly for nothing? What, after all, was there to charm more in one woman than another? Lina was false; why should he remain faithful?
These were wild, rash thoughts; but Ralph was young, tortured in his first love, and tempted by an artful, impassioned woman, whose perverse will carried the strength of fate with it.
Still, it was only at times that his heart rose hotly against its old nature. There was more of scorn and rage, mingled with the certainty that Agnes Barker loved him, than of real passion, but it assuaged the humiliation of Lina's falsehood, and the consciousness of her attachment diverted the grief that would otherwise have consumed him. Though maddened by all these conflicting passions, the young man had sought desperately after the lost girl from the moment her absence was discovered on the morning after the storm, but she seemed to have disappeared like a shadow from the earth; for from the hour when she left Ben Benson's boat-house, not a trace of her movements could be found.