“It is ruined whether you win or not, and yet I go on sinning day after day, loving her as madly as ever,” Earle cried, clenching his hands in his pain. “Go, go,” he added; “when she is once your wife, I may be able to gain something of peace, or the semblance of it.”
Paul Tressalia needed no second bidding, though it must be confessed he was not elated by any very strong hope of success.
His heart told him that if Editha loved with the same intensity as Earle, it would be as enduring as eternity, and he could never hope to win her as his wife.
Still he could not rest content until he had once more put his fate to the test, and, with a tender though sad parting from his noble-hearted kinsman, he once more crossed the broad Atlantic.
He reached Newport in the height of its gayety, and was enthusiastically welcomed by his old acquaintances.
To his surprise Mr. Dalton received him with great coolness, surmising at once the errand upon which he had come.
He had discovered, if others had not, that Paul Tressalia was no longer “heir to great expectations,” and he was not at all anxious now either that Editha should marry.
She was ill, failing daily and hourly, as every one could see, and many predicted a rapid decline and an early death unless some change for the better occurred soon.
Mr. Dalton shook his head sadly and sighed heavily, as a fond and anxious parent should do, whenever interviewed upon the subject, but secretly he was calculating his chances of falling heir to her snug fortune.
“She is my daughter,” he would say to himself, rubbing his hands together in that peculiar way he had. “If she dies unmarried and without a will—and I don’t think she has thought of such a thing as that—of course, being her nearest blood relation, I shall inherit;” and he always ended these confidential cogitations with a chuckle, accompanied by a look of infinite cunning.