Every day
this ice-cold beauty, this dangerous, handsome cousin of his, went up to
that place,--that usher's girltrap. Every day,--regularly now,--it used
to be different. Did she go only to get out of his, her cousin's, reach?
Was she not rather becoming more and more involved in the toils of this
plotting Yankee?
If Mr. Bernard had shown himself at that moment a few rods in advance,
the chances are that in less than one minute he would have found himself
with a noose round his neck, at the heels of a mounted horseman.
Providence spared him for the present. Mr. Richard rode his horse
quietly round to the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the
house. He got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not
sleep. The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that a deep
intrigue was going on which would end by bringing Elsie and the
schoolmaster into relations fatal to all his own hopes. With that
ingenuity which always accompanies jealousy, he tortured every
circumstance of the last few weeks so as to make it square with this
belief. From this vein of thought he naturally passed to a consideration
of every possible method by which the issue he feared might be avoided.
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