It will only seem so, considering the character of the man. Wicked as Swinton was, he had fallen madly in love with Julia Girdwood—madly and desperately.
And now on the eve of possessing her, to hold that possession as by a thread, that might be cut at any moment by caprice.
And that caprice the will of an injured wife! No wonder the wretch saw in his future a thorny entanglement—a path, if bestrewed with flowers, beset also by death’s-heads and skeletons!
Fan had helped him in his scheme for acquiring an almost fabulous fortune; at a touch she could destroy it.
“By heaven! she shall not!” was the reflection that came forth from his lips as he stood smoking a cigar, and speculating on the feared future. Assisted in conception by that same cigar, and before it was smoked to a stump, he had contrived a plan to secure him against his wife’s future interference in whatever way it might be exerted.
His scheme of bigamy was scarce guilt, compared with that now begotten in his brain.
He was standing upon the edge of the canal, whose steep bank formed the back inclosure of his garden. The tow-path was on the other side, so that the aqueous chasm yawned almost directly under his feet.
The sight of it was suggestive. He knew it was deep. He saw it was turbid, and not likely to tell tales.
There was a moon coursing through the sky. Her beams, here and there, fell in bright blotches upon the water. They came slanting through the shrubbery, showing that it was a young moon, and would soon go down.
It was already dark where he stood in the shadow of a huge laurustinus; but there was light enough to show that with a fiend’s face he was contemplating the canal.