“Nay,” interrupted Muriel, her drooping hands clasped before her, and her head bowed in pensive reverie, “he will never call here again.”
She was right. He never did—but once.
CHAPTER XXVI.
A MAN OF RUINED BLOOD.
Where was Mr. Lafitte all this time? Had he returned to the sunny South, and to that particular part of its sunniness in which sweltered his negroes at their miserable toil?
Mr. Lafitte had not. He was still in the city, at the Tremont House, and for the last three days he had kept his room, sick and shattered with the terrible shock he had received, and raging like a devil in his impotent fury. That he should owe his life to the man he hated was bad enough; but to a woman, and worse still, to a negro—oh, to his rank and insolent pride this was the humiliation of humiliations! It had not come to him at first, but several hours after Harrington had left him, when he began to recover from the paralysis of spirit in which he lay, it outgrew upon him, and increased in intensity, till he raved in a phrenetic agony of infernal shame and rage.
In this delightful mood he had continued for three days. Exhausted on the night of the third by the violence of his frenzy, he had slept heavily, and awakened late on the morning of the fourth, calmer in spirit, and though, still somewhat weak, stronger and in better health than he had been. The Atkinses, father and sons, had called severally three times, during his illness, but he had left orders that he would see nobody, and they had not been admitted to his presence.
Up now and dressed, his breakfast eaten, two juleps imbibed and a cigar finished, he began to feel more like himself, and look more like the handsome brunette devil he usually was. A little less rich in color, to be sure, but still sufficiently so for good appearance’s sake; and as he walked up and down the plainly-furnished chamber, in the space between his bed and the window, he even felt something of his usual fiendish jocundity revive sullenly within him.
Three letters had arrived for him during his illness. He had not even looked at them, but let them lie unopened on the table where the servant had laid them. Now, however, when his mind was able to attend to their contents, he paused in his walk as his eye rested on them, and approaching the table, took them up, and gazed at their superscriptions and post-marks.