his shame; but that his threat should prove
ineffectual was not among his fears. Illustrating a well-known tendency
of human nature, his reckless egoism based its confidence on the
presumed existence of heroic self-devotion in his victim. Starting from
a knowledge of the close affection between Emily and her father, the
logic of desire had abundant arguments to prove that the girl must and
could act in but one way. Dagworthy's was not an original mind; the
self-immolation of daughters (not of sons) on their parents' behalf is
among vulgar conceptions of the befitting, and it is more than probable
that the mill-owner was half-consciously supported by precedents drawn
from his readings in popular fiction. His imagination, as is commonly
the case, was only strong in the direction of his wishes; neglecting
Emily's avowed attachment to an accepted lover--whose shadowiness made
him difficult to realise even as an obstacle--he dwelt persistently on
the thought of Hood's position, and found it impossible to imagine a
refusal on Emily's part to avert from her father the direst of
calamities. That other motive, the strength of which in Emily was
independent of her plighted troth, was not within the range of his
conceptions; that a woman should face martyrdom rather than marry
without love was a contingency alien to his experience and to the
philosophy wherewith nature had endowed him. In spite of the attributes
of nobleness which so impressed him in the object of his love, Dagworthy
could give no credit to the utterance of such a feeling. Whilst Emily
spoke, he was for the moment overcome by a vision of vague glories;
reflecting on her words, he interpreted them as merely emphasising her
determination to wed one only. Their effect was to give new food to his
jealousy.

That solace of men's unconscious pessimism, the faith, pathetically
clung to, that in frustration of desire is the soul's health, is but too
apt to prove itself fallacious just where its efficiency would show most
glorious. Is there not lurking somewhere in your mind, not withstanding
the protests of your realistic intelligence, more than half a hope that
Richard Dagworthy will emerge radiant from the gulf into which his
passions have plunged him? For the credit of human nature! But what if
human nature oft establishes its credit by the failures over which we
shake our heads? Of many ways to the resting-place of souls, the way of
affliction is but one; cling, if it