xtreme want, and from very despair. Will you
credit that, at hearing this news, my first sensations were only rage
and disappointment? True, he had died, died in all the misery my heart
could wish, but I had not seen him die; and the death-bed seemed to me
robbed of its bitterest pang.

"I know not to this day, though I have often questioned him, what
interest Thornton had in deceiving me by this tale: for my own part, I
believe that he himself was deceived; certain it is (for I inquired),
that a person very much answering to Tyrrell's description had perished
in the state Thornton mentioned; and this might, therefore, in all
probability, have misled him.

"I left Paris, and returned, through Normandy, to England (where I
remained some weeks); there we again met: but I think we did not meet
till I had been persecuted by the insolence and importunity of Thornton.
The tools of our passions cut both ways: like the monarch who employed
strange beasts in his army, we find our treacherous allies less
destructive to others than ourselves. But I was not of a temper to brook
the tauntings or the encroachment of my own creature: it had been with
but an ill grace that I had endured his familiarity, when I absolutely
required his services; much less could I suffer his intrusion when those
services,--services not of love, but hire, were no longer necessary.
Thornton, like all persons of his stamp, had a low pride, which I was
constantly offending. He had mixed with men more than my equals in rank
on a familiar footing, and he could ill brook the hauteur with which my
disgust at his character absolutely constrained me to treat him. It is
true that the profuseness of my liberality was such that the mean wretch
stomached affronts for which he was so largely paid; but, with the
cunning and malicious spite natural to him, he knew well how to repay
them in kind. While he assisted, he affected to ridicule, my revenge;
and though he soon saw that he durst not, for his very life, breathe
a syllable openly against Gertrude or her memory, yet he contrived, by
general remarks and covert insinuations, to gall me to the very quick
and in the very tenderest point. Thus a deep and cordial antipathy to
each other arose and grew and strengthened, till, I believe, like the
fiends in hell, our mutual hatred became our common punishment.

"No sooner had I returned to England than I found him here awaiting my
arrival. He favoured me with frequent visit