s though it
had been written on his forehead. The first gleam of pleasure which had
visited his dark soul for twenty years was the sight of Solomon's
countenance when, on the sixth day's sale, the auctioneer gave out that
lot 970 had been withdrawn. Solomon might have received the intimation
long before but for the cautious prudence which had prevented him from
making any inquiries upon the subject. For a minute or two he stood
stunned and silent, then hurriedly made his way to the rostrum. Richard,
who was sitting at the long table with the catalogue before him, kept
his eyes fixed upon its pages while the auctioneer pointed him out as
the purchaser of the lot in question. He knew the inquiry that was being
asked, and its reply; he knew whose burly form it was that thrust itself
the next minute in between him and his neighbor; every drop of blood in
his body, every hair on his head, seemed to be cognizant that the man he
hated most on earth was seated cheek by jowl with him--that the first
step in the road of retribution had been taken voluntarily by his victim
himself. The rest is soon told. Solomon at once commenced his clumsy
efforts at conciliation; and his endeavors to recommend himself to the
stranger's friendship were suffered quickly to bear fruit. He invited
him to his house in London, which, to Richard's astonishment and
indignation, he found to be his mother's home; and, in short, fell of
his own accord into the very snare which the other, had he had the
fixing of it, would himself have laid for him.

And now, as we have said, when all had gone exactly as Richard would
have had it go, and Solomon was being punished to the uttermost, the
executor of his doom was beginning to feel, if not compunction, at all
events remorse. No adequate retribution had indeed overtaken Harry. To
have made her a widow was, in fact, to have freed her from the yoke of a
harsh and unloved master; but the fact was, notwithstanding the perjury
of which he believed her to have been guilty, he had never hated her as
he had hated the other authors of his wrongs. She had once on the
rock-bound coast at Gethin preserved his life; she had accorded to his
passion all that woman can grant, and had reciprocated it; not even in
his fiercest hour of despair had he harbored the thought of raising his
hand against her; he had hated her, indeed, as his betrayer, and as
Solomon's wife, but never regarded her with that burning detestation
which he f