"You think you will marry him," he said. His voice was low, not at all violent; but it frightened Agatha the more perhaps for that. At all events it rang in her ears for days afterwards.
His hopes were at fever height when he reached the villa. He had entered the tiny avenue and come cautiously up, hidden by the rhododendrons, to that small gate inside which the girl so often at this hour ministered to her flowers.
And then he had seen her—in Dillwyn's arms.
The evening was not so far advanced, and the delicate light of a first love that lay on her beautiful face was quite clear to him. He saw her lift her arms, and let Dillwyn take her into his. They kissed each other.
He went a little mad then. He lost consciousness for a moment or two, and clung to a tree close to him. So much had been dared and done, and now was it all to be in vain?
He recovered himself presently, remembering everything, and a great oath broke from him. He swore to himself that the one terrible deed of his life should not lie fallow. Something should come of it. It should bear fruit.
He withdrew into the denser shadow, and waited, and watched, and listened. He was not naturally a man of base understandings. There was nothing small about him, and probably under happier circumstance he would have disdained to lie there in ambush watching and listening; but now passion mastered him, and his love for Agatha—the one pure sentiment of his life—was unhappily the undoing of him. It should have ennobled him; it only debased him.
Everything seemed to be falling from him. This girl on whom his soul was set would not so much as look at him, and Dillwyn— that affair of General Montgomery's had touched him. In time the wedge, that now had got in its thin edge, would work deeper and take from him his practice. A hatred against Dillwyn had always been in his breast ever since those earliest days when he first came to Rickton, and now it blazed and grew to monstrous dimensions.
What! was Dillwyn to "supplant him these two times?" Never! His courage came back to him. His indomitable will grew strong again. As Dillwyn passed him on his way home he raised is hand as if to strike him to the earth, but paused.
"You think you will marry him," said he again. "You think it possible to escape me." He was quite beside himself, or he would hardly have dared so to speak to her.