Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/51

Rh "I hate him!"

"Whom?"

"You know I wished to tell you!"

There was no time to ask or to make any further explanations. A few moments later, we were at the table, looking pleasantly unconscious of mysteries or evil omens. But the more I meditate upon all this, the more am I convinced that a crisis is not far off.

It is hard to be helpless at such a time. The things called crimes are not the real crimes in this world. Which is worse,—to inflict death, or to ruin and corrupt a life?—to steal a purse, or to destroy reputation and purity? Mankind is the victim of phrases and superstitions. If I were a law-giver, I would institute a truer and juster dispensation. But I am not a law-giver. I am a doctor, without work; a man of science, whom science knows not; a gentleman, without fortune; a lover, without a mistress. I am instinct with powers and capacities, yet I am barren and impotent. This is my darkest and most torpid hour, yet it is the hour when I most need light and activity. Ah, Sinfire, if I could be omnipotent but one moment, for your sake!

During the last few days a serenity almost remarkable under the circumstances has settled down upon the inhabitants of Cedarcliffe. It may be external merely; but, such as it is, it is marked. John is grave and undemonstrative, but not lugubrious, and there is a gentleness in his demeanor that seems strange in him. He drinks scarcely at all, and appears to have lost his taste even for smoking. He is hard hit, I fear, but he is bearing it like a gentleman. I think I can perceive that he avoids being alone with Sinfire; and his bearing towards her, when I see them together, is friendly, but abstracted. He has made up his mind that she is lost to him; and the conviction has quelled his stout spirit,—whether temporarily or permanently time will show. I am sorry for him; but it is better so than if he had married her. You might as well harness an English dray-horse under the same yoke with the winged steed Pegasus.

Henry, on the other hand, wears an aspect of contented indifference which cannot but be assumed. His manner to Sinfire has an undertone of easy gallantry which is far from being offensive or even pointed, and would be natural enough as the attitude of a man of the world towards a pretty girl, but is extraordinary in a lover towards a former mistress whom he had abandoned, and whom he intends, probably, to ensnare again. What inducement he can hold out to her to condone