nger-nails.

"Tut! You don't know to what lengths love may go. Even the feeble infant
hearts of men whose minds are a blank can carry them any length in the
devotion or the revenge of love!" He paused, and then added in a low
tone, "She has outraged my love!"

"Surely not past forgiveness?" interrupted Mr. Bonnithorne, nervously.
"It would be a lifelong injury. And she is a woman, too."

Hugh faced about.

"But he is a man; and I have my reckoning with him also." Hugh Ritson
strode across the room, and then stopped suddenly. "Look you,
Bonnithorne, you said that with all your confidence on the night of my
father's death, you had your doubts until to-day. But I had never a
moment's doubt. Why? Because I had assurance from my mother's own lips.
To me? No, but worse; to him. He knows well he is not my father's heir.
He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I
know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy
perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge?
Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward,
ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He
stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It will be
retribution!"

Hugh Ritson's composure was gone. Mr. Bonnithorne, not easily cowed,
dropped his eyes before him. "Terrible, terrible!" he muttered again,
and added with more assurance: "But you know I have always urged you to
assert your right to the inheritance."

Hugh was striding about the room, his infirm foot trailing heavily after
him.

"Bonnithorne," he said, pausing, "when a woman has outraged the poor
weak heart of one of the waifs whom fate flings into the gutter, he
sometimes throws a cup of vitriol into her face, saying, 'If she is not
for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her
suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in
his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another
light trill of laughter.

"But the cup of retribution is not to be measured by the cup of
vitriol."

Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his
breath, "Terrible, terrible!"

"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall
marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together
and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf
dividing both from the world; and so on