stered in the ship's books and known
to the passengers; nor could it be surmised that the young "mad girl,"
since spoken of, as I had been told, in the papers, as having been
restored to her friends by the accident of meeting the Latona, and
Miriam Monfort, were one and the same person. But if the time should
come when all should be explained, either by my own lips or the
revelations of others, good cause might Basil Bainrothe and his
confederate have to tremble!

Like all cold, patient, deeply-feeling men, there were untold reserves
of power and passion in the nature of Wardour Wentworth which might, for
aught I knew to the contrary, tend naturally to and culminate in
revenge. The wish to retaliate was, I knew, a fundamental fault in my
own character, one I had often occasion to struggle with even in
childhood, when Evelyn, my despot, was also my dependant, and generosity
had been called to the aid of forbearance. Vengeance was a fierce thirst
in my Judaic heart which only Christian streams could ever allay or
quench, and I judged the man I loved by self--not always a fitting
standard of comparison.

And Gregory! I could imagine well the fiendish delight with which he had
seen me day by day writhing uncomplainingly beneath the unexplained and
as I had deemed unsuspected alienation of Wentworth, the cause of which
his act had wrapped in mystery! Afraid to tamper with the note I gave
him for the cool, discerning eye of Wentworth, curiosity had at first
led him to break the seal of that intrusted to his care in return, and
dark malevolence to retain it rather than destroy, for the eye of his
confederate. That he had dispatched it at once for Paris was very
evident from the pencilling on the back of the letter; and that the
snare was set for me already, in which the accident of the encountered
raft proved an assistant, I could not doubt.

I fell into the hands of Bainrothe on shipboard instead of into those
of Gregory in New York; this was the only difference, for subterfuge
could have done its work as well, if not as daringly, on land as on sea;
and the league of iniquity was made before I sailed from Savannah.

How perfectly I could comprehend, for the first time since this
revelation, what Wentworth must have suffered beneath his burden of
unrelieved doubt and conjecture! I could see how, day by day, as no
answer came to change the current of his thoughts, conviction slowly
settled down like a cloud upon his heart,