ue to his own wilful abuse of irrevocable hours.

With this consolatory creed came, of necessity--the devil's grand
luxury, Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another
man, or I accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!"
and the logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to folly--to retort
on the man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you.
Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the
most zest a devil? For what is a devil?--A being whose sole work on
earth is some revenge on God!

Jasper Losely was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as
the vain are--combative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal
spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and
egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to
hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a
passion not native to it. Jasper had expected so much from his marriage
with the great man's daughter--counted so thoroughly on her power to
obtain pardon and confer wealth--and his disappointment had been so
keen--been accompanied with such mortification--that he regarded the man
whom he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But
not till now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite
vengeance. So long as there was a chance that he could extort from
Darrell the money that was the essential necessary to his life, he
checked his thoughts whenever they suggested a profitless gratification
of rage. But now that Darrell had so scornfully and so inexorably
spurned all concession--now that nothing was to be wrung from him except
by force--force and vengeance came together in his projects. And yet
even in the daring outrage he was meditating, murder itself did not
stand out as a thought accepted--no; what pleased his wild and turbid
imagination was the idea of humiliating by terror the man who had
humbled him. To penetrate into the home of this haughty scorner--to
confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force
to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from me--I come no
more as a suppliant--I command you to accept my terms"; to gloat over
the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man
to beg for mercy at his feet;--this was the picture which Jasper Losely
conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less
than the