“He is!” answered Thornton, with a sardonic smile.
“And beyond all want!” resumed Glanville.
“He is!” was the tautological reply.
“Mr. Thornton,” said Glanville, with a calm voice, “I have now done with you—you may leave the room!”
Thornton bowed with an air of ironical respect, and obeyed the command.
I turned to look at Glanville. His countenance, always better adapted to a stern, than a soft expression, was perfectly fearful; every line in it seemed dug into a furrow; the brows were bent over his large and flashing eyes with a painful intensity of anger and resolve; his teeth were clenched firmly as if by a vice, and the thin upper lip, which was drawn from them with a bitter curl of scorn, was as white as death. His right hand had closed upon the back of the massy chair, over which his tall nervous frame leant, and was grasping it with an iron force, which it could not support: it snapped beneath his hand like a hazel stick. This accident, slight as it was, recalled him to himself. He apologized with apparent self-possession for his disorder; and, after a few words of fervent and affectionate farewell on my part, I left him to the solitude which I knew he desired.
CHAPTER LVII.
While I seemed only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my heart the consciousness and vanity of power; in the levity of the lip, I disguised the knowledge and the workings of the brain; and I looked, as with a gifted eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to float an idler with the herd only upon the surface of the stream. —Falkland.
As I walked home, revolving the scene I had witnessed, the words of Tyrrell came into my recollection—viz. that the cause of Glanville’s dislike to him had arisen in Tyrrell’s greater success in some youthful liaison. In this account I could not see much probability. In the first place, the cause was not sufficient to produce such an effect; and, in the second, there was little likelihood that the young and rich Glanville, possessed of the most various accomplishments, and the most remarkable personal beauty, should be supplanted by a needy spendthrift (as Tyrrell at that time was), of coarse manners, and unpolished mind; with a person not, indeed, unprepossessing, but somewhat touched by time, and never more comparable to Glanville’s than that of the Satyr to Hyperion.