“Ah!” cried Mr. Huyton, suddenly starting up. “I am sorry I have forgotten—I have an engagement—I must hurry away, or I shall be too late!”
“Shall we see you again to-day? my daughters will be sorry to miss you,” said Mr. Barham, looking with a sort of speculative
wonder at Charles’s countenance. It was not surprising, that his face should catch the attention of even the egotistical and self-centered man. There was something so wild and strange in the expression.
“I don’t know! perhaps, if I can—; may be I shall leave town,” was the incoherent reply, in a low, changed, husky voice.
“You are ill, I fear,” said the other, frightened, and laying a hand on his arm; “let me ring for something.”
“No! no! only hurried, my dear sir,” said Charles, with a painful smile. “Good-day.”
He hastened away. There was war in his heart; anger, jealousy, outraged feeling, hopeless love; sickening pain, a burning desire of revenge; a vindictive determination to do—he knew not what; any thing, every thing, however miserable to himself, so that he might return agony for agony; that he might make those suffer who had injured him. Unconscious of external objects, he gained his own apartments, and there locked in and safe from interruption, for hours he gave way to his fiery passions. Words could hardly describe the convulsive vehemence of the feelings that tore and shook his soul. The old Greek fables of men possessed by the furies, seemed realized in him. He was mad with rage; frantic with disappointed love; frenzied by a wild jealousy—cruel, insatiable, dark, pitiless as the grave itself. Whatever of hope he had hitherto entertained now rose to his mind, but to torture him more; his very plans and expectations, built on the uncertainty of his rival’s profession, and his chances of supplanting him during a prolonged absence, now recurred to his memory as a mockery and a torment. Lost! all lost! every chance, every hope, every deep-laid scheme, swept away before the flood of his hated rival’s success. Baffled, outwitted, triumphed over, scorned; such, no doubt, he was. The sailor had understood his projects, seen through his offers of friendship, and now laughed at them, having made sure of his bride.
And was there nothing left for him yet; no hope! no revenge?
Was he helplessly the object of contempt; the disappointed, the rejected lover; could he do nothing? Ah! the cold heart he had failed to touch with love, might yet be bent by sorrow; and though he could not make it his prize, he could, perchance, make it his victim!
He could wound her through another; and he would. No matter what it cost him, no one should say he was the mourning lover, victim to an unrequited affection. No! he would dash aside his love for her, forget it, trample on it if needs must; but he would have revenge. If there was one sentiment in the mind of Hilary, one affection which could rival her attachment to her husband, he knew it was her love for her brother; nay, he believed that it was the strongest, the deepest of the two. It had been planted by nature, nursed by tenderness and sympathy through every year of her life; it was one with which no contemporary love could interfere, with which no past friendship could compare, which no future regard could in the least degree replace.