t
place, Randal, like Iago, loved villany for the genius it called forth
in him. The sole luxury the abstemious aspirer allowed to himself was
that which is found in intellectual restlessness. Untempted by wine,
dead to love, unamused by pleasure, indifferent to the arts, despising
literature save as means to some end of power, Randal Leslie was
the incarnation of thought hatched out of the corruption of will.
At twilight we see thin airy spectral insects, all wing and nippers,
hovering, as if they could never pause, over some sullen mephitic pool.
Just so, methinks, hover over Acheron such gnat-like, noiseless soarers
into gloomy air out of Stygian deeps, as are the thoughts of spirits
like Randal Leslie's. Wings have they, but only the better to pounce
down,--draw their nutriment from unguarded material cuticles; and just
when, maddened, you strike, and exulting exclaim, "Caught, by Jove!"
wh-irr flies the diaphanous, ghostly larva, and your blow falls on your
own twice-offended cheek.

The young men who were acquainted with Randal said he had not a
vice! The fact being that his whole composition was one epic vice, so
elaborately constructed that it had not an episode which a critic could
call irrelevant. Grand young man!

"But, my dear fellow," said Randal, as soon as he had learned from Frank
all that had passed on board the vessel between him and Beatrice, "I
cannot believe this. 'Never loved you'? What was her object, then, in
deceiving not only you, but myself? I suspect her declaration was but
some heroical refinement of generosity. After her brother's dejection
and probable ruin, she might feel that she was no match for you. Then,
too, the squire's displeasure! I see it all; just like her,--noble,
unhappy woman!"

Frank shook his head. "There are moments," said he, with a wisdom that
comes out of those instincts which awake from the depths of youth's
first great sorrow,--"moments when a woman cannot feign, and there are
tones in the voice of a woman which men cannot misinterpret. She does
not love me,--she never did love me; I can see that her heart has been
elsewhere. No matter,--all is over. I don't deny that I am suffering
an intense grief; it gnaws like a kind of sullen hunger; and I feel so
broken, too, as if I had grown old, and there was nothing left worth
living for. I don't deny all that."

"My poor, dear friend, if you would but believe--"

"I don't want to believe anything, except that I have b