"Oh, Gipsy! Gipsy!—lost to me forever. What are wealth and honor to me now! For you I toiled to win a home and name, believing you true. And thus I am repaid for all. Oh, is there nothing but treachery and deceit in this world? Would to heaven," he added, springing fiercely up, and shaking back his fair, brown hair, "that the man she has wedded were not an old dotard like that. I would blow his brains out ere another hour."
"My father will, no doubt, rejoice to find his years have saved his life," said Minnette, in her customary cold tone. "Pray, Mr. Rivers, be more calm; there is no necessity for all this excitement. If Aurora Gower has deserted you for one whom she supposed wealthier, it is only the old story over again."
"The old story!" exclaimed Archie, bitterly. "Yes, the old story of woman's heartlessness and treachery, and man's blind self-deception. Be calm! Yes; if you had told me she whom I love above all on earth was dead, and in her grave, I might be calm; but the wife of another, and that other"—he paused, and ground his teeth with impotent rage.
"Well, since it is so, and cannot be helped, what's the use of making such a time about it?" said Minnette, impatiently, taking up her book and beginning to read.
Archie glanced at the cold, stone-like girl before him, whose very calmness seemed to madden him; then, seizing his hat, he rushed from the room, exclaiming:
"Yes, I will see her—I will confront her once more, accuse her of her deceit and selfishness, and then leave the country forever."
He was out of the house in an instant; and in five minutes was galloping madly through the driving wind and rain, unheeded and unfelt, now toward Mount Sunset Hall.
The numberless blazing lights from the many windows illumined his path before it; the sound of revelry was wafted to his ears by the wind, making him gnash his teeth in very rage.
He reached the mansion, threw the reins to one of the many servants standing in the court-yard; and all wet and travel-stained, pale, wild, and excited as he was, he made his way through the wondering crowd, that involuntarily made way for him to pass; and
"So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
Among bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers and all.
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented—the gallant came late."