He argued on like that, sometimes with tender recollections of happy days when he had gone back home from some encounter, with accelerated pulses and a sensation of hope and joy altogether new.
He dwelt upon one particular day when he had come down from the mine to find Louise seated where he then was; and as he recalled the whole scene, he uttered a groan of misery, and swept it away by the interposition of that of the previous evening; and here his wrath once more grew hot against the man who had come between them, for without vanity he could feel that Louise had turned toward him at one time, and that after a while the memory of the trouble which had come upon them would have grown more faint, and then she would once more have listened to his suit.
But for that man—He ground his teeth as he recalled Aunt Marguerite’s hints and smiles; the allusions to the member of the French haute noblesse; their own connection with the blue blood of Gaul, and his own plebeian descent in Aunt Marguerite’s eyes. And now that the French noble had arrived, how noble he was in presence and in act! Stealing clandestinely into the house during the father’s absence, forcing the woman he professed to love into obedience by threats, till she knelt at his feet as one who pleads for mercy.
“And this is the haute noblesse!” cried Leslie, with a mocking laugh. “Thank heaven, I am only a commoner after all.”
He sat trying to compress his head with his hands, for it ached as if it would split apart. The cool night breeze came off the sea, moist and bearing refreshment on its wings; but Duncan Leslie found no comfort in the deep draught he drank. His head burned, his heart felt on fire, and he gazed straight before him into the blackness trying to make out his path. What should he do? Act like a man and cast her off as unworthy of a second thought, or rouse himself to the manly and forgiving part of seeking her out, dragging her from this scoundrel, and placing her back in her stricken father’s arms?
It was a hard fight, fought through the darkness of that terrible night, as he sat there on the rock, with the wind sighing from off the sea, and the dull, low boom of the waves as they broke at the foot of the cliff far below.
It was a fight between love and despair, between love and hate, between the spirit of a true, honest man who loved once in his life, and the cruel spirits of suspicion, jealousy, and malignity, which tortured him with their suggestions of Louise’s love for one who had tempted her to leave her father’s home.
As the day approached the air grew colder, but Duncan Leslie’s brow still burned, and his heart seemed on fire. The darkness grew more dense, and the fight still raged.
What should he do? The worse side of his fallible human nature was growing the stronger; and as he felt himself yielding, the greater grew his misery and despair.
“My darling!” he groaned aloud, “I loved you—I loved you with all my heart.”