“Quite so. We are quits. Some time my hour of revenge will come—it always does if patiently waited for, and if you like to join me, it will be yours too. You don’t imagine, I hope, that I had anything to do with that wretched article about Inarime in the ‘Aristophanes’? I abused him for it horribly. He instigated it, you know.”
“Oïdas! the mighty heavens! His motive, Stavros?”
“He heard about that Turkish fellow, and Agiropoulos very maliciously assured him he had no chance. He was wild when he knew it was all round Athens that he wanted to marry a girl who didn’t want him. He took it into his head he was flouted and mocked, and he resolved to bespatter the girl with as much mud as possible.”
“The villain! the hound!” Constantine muttered, incapable of coherent speech or thought.
“She is back in Tenos, I believe?”
Constantine nodded, with blazing inward-seeing eyes.
“He is in Athens—buoyed up, I suppose, with hope.”
“He! Who?”
“Your romantic Reineke,—a handsome fellow, too?”
“Where is he staying?”