gar ambition, her reckless vanity, every
effort I could have made against you would have been defeated from the
first. But, setting this out of the question, in spite of the utter
heartlessness of her attachment to you, if you had not consented to that
condition of waiting a year for her after marriage; or, consenting to
it, if you had broken it long before the year was out--knowing, as you
should have known, that in most women's eyes a man is not dishonoured by
breaking his promise, so long as he breaks it for a woman's sake--if,
I say, you had taken either of these courses, I should still have
been powerless against you. But you remained faithful to your promise,
faithful to the condition, faithful to the ill-directed modesty of your
love; and that very fidelity put you in my power. A pure-minded girl
would have loved you a thousand times better for acting as you did--but
Margaret Sherwin was not a pure-minded girl, not a maidenly girl: I have
looked into her thoughts, and I know it.

"Such were your chances against me; and such was the manner in which
you misused them. On _my_ side, I had indefatigable patience; personal
advantages equal, with the exception of birth and age, to yours:
long-established influence; freedom to be familiar; and more than all,
that stealthy, unflagging strength of purpose which only springs from
the desire of revenge. I first thoroughly tested your character, and
discovered on what points it was necessary for me to be on my guard
against you, when you took shelter under my roof from the storm. If your
father had been with you on that night, there were moments, while the
tempest was wrought to its full fury, when, if my voice could have
called the thunder down on the house to crush it and every one in it to
atoms, I would have spoken the word, and ended the strife for all of
us. The wind, the hail, and the lightning maddened my thoughts of your
father and you--I was nearly letting you see it, when that flash came
between us as we parted at my door.

"How I gained your confidence, you know; and you know also, how I
contrived to make you use me, afterwards, as the secret friend who
procured you privileges with Margaret which her father would not grant
at your own request. This, at the outset, secured me from suspicion
on your part; and I had only to leave it to your infatuation to do
the rest. With you my course was easy--with her it was beset by
difficulties; but I overcame them. Your fatal