“I’m damned sorry, Taylor,” he declared. “This is all a surprise to me. I hadn’t any doubt that they would swear you in. No hard feelings?”
Taylor had been conscious of the humiliation of his position. He knew that his friends would expect him to fight. And yet he felt more like gracefully yielding to the forces which had barred him from office upon the basis of so slight a technicality. And despite the knowledge that he had been robbed of the office, he would have taken Danforth’s hand, had he not at that instant chanced to glance at Carrington.
The latter’s eyes were aglow with a vindictive triumph; as his gaze met Taylor’s, his lips curved with a sneer.
A dark passion seized Taylor—the bitter, savage rage of jealousy. The antagonism he had felt for Carrington that day on the train when he had heard Carrington’s voice for the first time was suddenly intensified. It had been growing slowly, provoked by his knowledge of the man’s evil designs on Marion Harlan. But now there had come into the first antagonism a gripping lust to injure the other, a determination to balk him, to defeat him, to meet him on his own ground and crush him.
For Carrington’s sneer had caused the differences between them to become sharply personal; it would make the fight that was brewing between the two men not a political fight, but a fight of the spirit.
Taylor interpreted the sneer as a challenge, and he accepted it. His eyes gleamed with hatred unmistakable as they held Carrington’s; and the grin on his lips was the cold, unhumorous grin of the fighter who is not dismayed by odds. His voice was low and sharp, and it carried to every person in the room:
“We won’t shake, Danforth; you are not particular enough about the character of your friends!”
The look was significant, and it compelled the eyes of all of Taylor’s friends, so that Carrington instantly found himself the center of interest.
However, he did not change color; on his face a bland smile testified to his entire indifference to what Taylor or Taylor’s friends thought of him.
Taylor grinned mirthlessly at the judge, spoke shortly to Norton, and led the way out through the front door, followed by a number of his friends.