'I have already learned that,' said Ellinor, her tears beginning to fall hotly as she thought of Robert Wodrow.
'I am glad to hear you say so,' said Sleath, thinking of himself, 'and to find that after all you cannot forget a man who has once loved you—and loves you so fondly still, in spite of the coldness you manifest and the obliquy you heap upon him. How grand it is to forgive!' he continued, attempting to take her hand. 'The literary bear Samuel Johnson never seemed so wretched as a man and a moralist, than when he gloried in loving a good hater.'
Ellinor prevented him from capturing her hand by shudderingly retreating to the other end of the saloon. The contrast between the two men—the one who had sought, and still sought, to ensnare, and he whom she had wronged—who loved her so well, and had found, as she thought, a grave in that far away land, burned itself into her heart and brain with growing intensity, and wringing her hands, his name escaped her in a low voice.
'Robert—oh, Robert!'
Would time ever heal—ever conquer her reproachful heart-wound?
Fury gathered in the heart of Sleath.
'So,' said he, 'our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Wodrow, was not born to be hanged, if the newspaper accounts were true, by Jove; ha! ha!'
'Sir?' said Ellinor, scarcely understanding his brutal jest.
'Cheated the gallows—that is all.'
In that speech he revealed the underlying brutality of his nature—of the parvenu—the son of the foundling; and, in his wrath, he followed it up by another home-thrust.