Paul Tressalia!
The thought of him thrilled him with a sharper, fiercer pain.
Perhaps in time, now that Editha was lost to him, he might succeed in winning her.
It was too much for him to bear silently, and, bowing his head upon the table near which he had sat down, he groaned aloud.
Sumner Dalton smiled at the sound, while a cunning, sinister expression crept into his eyes. It did him good to know that Earle could suffer, and his strange hatred of him on his mother’s account made him inwardly exult over the sight.
But he had been revolving matters of importance in his mind while Earle was talking.
He had been immeasurably startled and mortified to learn how the rector of St. John’s chapel at Winchelsea had outwitted him, and fearfully angry and irritated when he realized how he had missed all the luxuries and magnificence of Wycliffe for so many years.
If he had only known that the marriage had been legal when he had opened that package and discovered that Earle was his son and heir of all the Marquis of Wycliffe’s great possessions, how differently he would have conducted himself.
If he could but have known what that piece of cardboard contained—if he could have read all this evidence then, and assured himself of its truth, as he would have taken pains to have done, how eagerly he would have worked for Earle’s release, and canceled every evidence of the evil passion within him. He would then have made peace with him, and have reaped all the advantages which the father of so noted a person as the future Marquis of Wycliffe would be would naturally enjoy.
But a faint hope animated him that perhaps it might not be too late, after all.