Like him, all craftily you must behave,
Or else he certainly will conquer you.
This golden rule remember when you meet him,
A scoundrel’s weapons must be used to beat him.
It took Caliphronas some considerable time to recover his usual serenity of temper, as never during his whole life had his vanity received such a blow as this refusal of Helena’s to marry him. Hitherto the Greek had been so much petted by all on account of his beauty, especially by women, that he had become quite a spoiled child, and looked upon it as his right that every whim he took into his handsome head should be gratified. To express a wish, and have it at once fulfilled, appeared to him to be the proper mode of behaving towards him, and it was a severe wound to his arrogant self-complacency to find that the only woman he cared about should refuse to yield to the dearest wish of his heart.
His love for Helena was purely a sensual feeling, based on the feminine beauty of the girl, so, when he found himself scorned in such a way, this animal affection speedily merged in the stronger feeling of intense hatred. Formerly he had regarded Helena as a charming toy, who would do him credit as his wife, and satisfy his artistic requirements by her womanly grace; but now he regarded her in the light of a bitter enemy, one who deserved to be punished for the infamous way in which she had slighted his addresses. Nothing would have given Caliphronas greater gratification than to mar that lovely face he had so much admired, and he would have liked to drag Helena through the gutter, and render her an object of pity and derision to all the world, in order to satiate his vengeance against her.
Had he been a Turkish Bashaw, he would doubtless have tied the offending beauty up in a sack and dropped her into the Bosphorus; had he been a Russian boyar, he would have done his best to get her exiled to Siberia; but, as he was neither the one nor the other, and was in his present position quite unable to treat her as cruelly as he wished, with devilish ingenuity he hit upon the only mode in which he could hope to gratify his petty spite against a woman, whose only crime was that she did not admire him as much as he admired himself.
The Count’s little scheme of revenge was not complex, as he merely intended to call upon Justinian to keep his word, and force his daughter into the marriage, and, once she was his wife, punish her in a way of which he felt himself thoroughly capable, that is, by worrying her to death. A petty, spiteful, narrow-minded man like the Greek had quite a gift in annoying those people whom he disliked, and by assiduously exercising this ignoble talent, could hope to render unbearable the life of even the happiest and most long-suffering person. Besides, if he grew tired of Helena, he could easily force her to leave Melnos, for her father was so old that he would soon be in his dotage, and thus could not protect the girl, in which case Caliphronas would be free to act as his spiteful nature dictated.
As[As] to Justinian’s breaking faith with him, such a thing never entered into the Count’s mind for a moment, and, scoundrel as he was himself, he hardly dreamed that any one would be astute enough to beat him with his own weapons, least of all the Demarch, who had hitherto acted towards him in a strictly honorable way. Strong diseases, however, require strong remedies, and, had the deceiving of Caliphronas not been imperative for the salvation of the island, Justinian would certainly not have stooped to such duplicity. Caliphronas, therefore, ready to betray the Demarch if the fancy took him, never thought the Demarch would betray him, and thus relied blindly on the promise of the forced marriage being fulfilled, in which case this consummate scamp decided to sacrifice Helena in the most painful manner which he could devise, for the gratification of his wounded pride.
That Maurice loved Helena he knew well enough, for had not the mere sight of that lovely face brought the young man from England to this semi-civilized island of the Ægean; but as to whether the passion was reciprocal, Caliphronas felt doubtful, as he had never espied anything in the girl’s demeanor towards his rival to inspire him with such a belief. But whether she loved this young Englishman or not, the Count was quite indifferent, as he had Justinian’s promise that, with her consent or without it, Helena should be his. As it turned out, the marriage, if it took place, would be without her consent, but this the Greek deemed a small matter, and therefore repaired to the Acropolis with the full determination to force the Demarch to keep his word. It was in this rosy light that Caliphronas looked at the circumstances of the case, and he never thought of what he should do in the event of things turning out otherwise, for the simple reason that, in his blind arrogance, he deemed himself too powerful to be thwarted in any way; so, disguising his chagrin under an air of triumph, he went in the afternoon to meet Justinian, and his fate.