“Our interview was long and agonising to me, and scarcely less painful to her—let me not further recur to it even at this moment, I——”
Nathan Gomer abruptly rose and paced the room, hiding his averted face in his handkerchief. Recovering himself by a strong effort he returned to his seat, and continued—
“I abruptly fled home and the neighbourhood; I never returned thither; I came to London, where I changed my name. A large legacy greeted my arrival. I hastened to secure it, and to commence to increase it by every art the usurer can employ. I hated my race; I knew no more certain way of feeding, ghoul-like, on their heart’s blood, than by lending money at usurious interest. Oh! but I have, like a miserable wretch that I was, gloated over the fearful agonies of a breaking heart, and in my dreary, solitary chamber I have yelled with triumphant delight over the mad despair of those I have helped to destruction.
“And so years went on. Gold showered on me from all sides. My aunt left her sole wealth to me; I converted her lands into coin, and lent it out. The proud bent like fawning spaniels at my feet—the humble knelt to me. The rich smiled and bowed to me. The high and the well-born sought—ugh! I might have surfeited myself with the ‘best society,’ yellow, ungainly dwarf though I happened to be.
“One night, alone in my dismal room, gloating over the feat of having that day planted my foot on a proud man’s neck, there suddenly came upon me the memory of the past. I was a boy again. She whom I had so loved in my youth, Flora Thorneley, stood before me; there, in her white girlish garb, bright, shining like a seraph, her soft, sad eyes bent upon me with a pitying expression, and her low, musical voice ringing in my ears—‘Thou hast broken thy promise,’ she said; ‘thou hast planted sorrow where thou mightest have sown joy; thou hast plunged into hopeless misery those whom thou mightest have lifted into happiness. Alas! alas!’ And then it seemed to me that I was alone and sightless.”
Wilton, with his hands compressed, had risen up as Gomer uttered the name, and he repeated—
“Flora Thorneley?”
“Even she whom you wedded!” exclaimed Nathan, with excitement; “even she. My first love and my last. Be seated, my story is drawing to a close.”
Wilton obeyed, but looked upon him with a gaze in which wonder, mystification and stupefaction were blended. A suggestion had presented itself to him which electrified him.
Nathan Gomer went on, regarded now by Flora and Mark with intense earnestness.