who had solemnly determined never to know what age
or infirmity was." The insult was too much. His outraged vanity hardened
into absolute malice. For the first time he positively hated the man who
could be loved better than himself. He forgot the self-sacrifice, the
wealth given up to his use--the sublime devotion which had made James
Harrington a guardian angel to Mabel's son. He forgot everything save
that the noble girl he had married for her wealth--wealth even on her
wedding-day half squandered at the gaming table, by an unfaithful
guardian, had give the preference of her taste--he cared little for a
deeper feeling--to one younger than himself, and that one the man to
whom his first wife's wealth had descended in one vast property.

Was it not enough that the young man had stepped into his place on the
death of his mother--that when he fancied himself in the untrammelled
possession of her fortune, a will, undreamed of during her life, should
have been found, transmitting every dollar of her property into the
uncontrolled possession of a son--was not this disappointment enough?
Must his self-love and pride be swept into the same vortex? Had both
wives proved their treason against him where he was most sensitive?

The old man would not remember that James Harrington had not only
allowed him to remain the ostensible possessor of this large fortune,
undoubtedly his own just inheritance, but that more than two thirds of
the annual income had for nearly twenty years been surrendered to his
unquestioned disposal. He forgot that Mabel's fortune had melted away at
the gaming-table without inquiry or protest on her part, and that, in
fact, his own luxurious life was fostered only by their magnanimous
bounty. All these things were ignored in his rage at the secrets
revealed in that unhappy journal, and he really believed himself the
most wronged and outraged of human beings--wronged because the woman
whom he had first married for her wealth alone, had divined the truth,
and left all that she possessed to her son, which seemed a new offense
to him then--and outraged that any woman honored by his preference,
should ever have given another place in her thoughts. His grounds for
anger went no deeper than this at the moment, for even his stony heart
would not give birth to a thought of wrong against Mabel, beyond the
erring love so feelingly regretted in every line of that book; but there
was a tempter at hand, ready to infuse ve