terwards, there was to be a search in
the garret for papers, and these were to be discovered in a certain dusty
recess, where, of course, they would have been placed by Miss Cynthia.

And now the one condition which gave any value to these arrangements
seemed like to fail. This obscure youth--this poor fool, who had been on
the point of marrying a simpleton to whom he had made a boyish
promise--was coming between him and the object of his long pursuit,--the
woman who had every attraction to draw him to herself. It had been a
matter of pride with Murray Bradshaw that he never lost his temper so as
to interfere with the precise course of action which his cool judgment
approved; but now he was almost beside himself with passion. His labors,
as he believed, had secured the favorable issue of the great case so long
pending. He had followed Myrtle through her whole career, if not as her
avowed lover, at least as one whose friendship promised to flower in love
in due season. The moment had come when the scene and the characters in
this village drama were to undergo a change as sudden and as brilliant as
is seen in those fairy spectacles where the dark background changes to a
golden palace and the sober dresses are replaced by robes of regal
splendor. The change was fast approaching; but he, the enchanter, as he
had thought himself, found his wand broken, and his power given to
another.

He could not sleep during that night. He paced his room, a prey to
jealousy and envy and rage, which his calm temperament had kept him from
feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of all
that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable anguish.
Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the
spot, that she might never be another's,--that neither man nor woman
should ever triumph over him,--the proud ambitious man, defeated,
humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most
vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was
not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if
anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The idea floated
through his mind, for he thought of everything; but he was a lawyer, and
not a fool, and had no idea of figuring in court as a criminal. Besides,
he was not a murderer,--cunning was his natural weapon, not violence. He
had a certain admiration of desperate crime in ot