ing-looking persons who are really in
sharp trouble--these are more often bilious or dyspeptic, and know no
more serious grief than the incapacity to gratify their appetites for
the high-flavored delicacies of the table. A man may be endowed with
superb physique, and a constitution that is in perfect working
order--his face and outward appearance may denote the most harmonious
action of the life principle within him--and yet his nerves may be so
finely strung that he may be capable of suffering acuter agony in his
mind than if his body were to be hacked slowly to pieces by jagged
knives, and it will leave no mark on his features while YOUTH still has
hold on his flesh and blood.

So it was with me; and I wondered what SHE--Nina--would say, could she
behold me, unmasked as it were, in the solitude of my own room. This
thought roused another in my mind--another at which I smiled grimly. I
was an engaged man! Engaged to marry my own wife; betrothed for the
second time to the same woman! What a difference between this and my
first courtship of her! THEN, who so great a fool as I--who so adoring,
passionate and devoted! NOW, who so darkly instructed, who so cold, so
absolutely pitiless! The climax to my revenge was nearly reached. I
looked through the coming days as one looks through a telescope out to
sea, and I could watch the end approaching like a phantom ship--neither
slow nor fast, but steadily and silently. I was able to calculate each
event in its due order, and I knew there was no fear of failure in the
final result. Nature itself--the sun, moon and stars, the sweeping
circle of the seasons--all seem to aid in the cause of rightful
justice. Man's duplicity may succeed in withholding a truth for a time,
but in the end it must win its way. Once resolve, and then determine to
carry out that resolve, and it is astonishing to note with what
marvelous ease everything makes way for you, provided there be no
innate weakness in yourself which causes you to hesitate. I had
formerly been weak, I knew, very weak--else I had never been fooled by
wife and friend; but now, now my strength was as the strength of a
demon working within me. My hand had already closed with an iron grip
on two false unworthy lives, and had I not sworn "never to relax, never
to relent" till my vengeance was accomplished? I had! Heaven and earth
had borne witness to my vow, and now held me to its stern fulfillment.

CHAPTER XX.

Winter, or wha