MEANWHILE.
Percival Thorne had never thought much on the subject of revenge. He rather
took it for granted that deliberate revenge was an extraordinary and
altogether exceptional thing. People give way to bursts of passion which
pass away and leave no trace: they are so hot with fury which comes to
nothing at all that at the first glance it seems as if the anger which
bears fruit must be something different in kind. But it is possible that if
Percival had considered the matter he might have arrived at the conclusion
that revenge does not depend only on intensity of passion, but on intensity
of passion and aptness of opportunity together. Disembodied hate soon dies
unless it is fiendish in its strength.
[Illustration: "ADDIE STOOD BREATHLESS, AND PERCIVAL'S HEART GAVE A QUICK
THROB."--Page 676.]
He had had fair warning at the birthday party. Lottie, smarting with
humiliation, had looked him full in the face with a flash of such bitter
enmity as springs from the consciousness of one's own folly. And Lottie's
eyes conveyed their meaning well. That very afternoon, when Percival
looked up as he lay on the turf at her feet, they had been most eloquent of
love. "Foolish child!" he had thought, "she is only seventeen to-day, and
childish still." When he encountered the sudden flash of hate he would
hardly have been surprised at some instant manifestation of it. Had she
carried a dagger, like
Our Lombard country-girls along the coast,
vengeance might have come at once. But she spoke to him later in her
ordinary voice, and touched his hand when she bade him good-night; and it
was only natural to conclude that nothing would follow her glance of fury.
Something of bitterness might linger for a while, but Lottie was only
seventeen, and that afternoon she had loved him.
He was right enough. There was nothing fiendish in Lottie's hatred: it
would soon have spent its strength in helpless longings and died. But that
very night it flew straight to Horace Thorne, and unobserved found shelter
there. It assumed a shape not clearly defined as yet, but a shape which
time would surely reveal. It drew Lottie to the young man's side while the
tears of pain and shame were hardly yet dry upon her burning cheeks.
In spite of the talk on her birthday morning, Lottie hardly understood the
relative positions of the Thornes. Percival was disinherited and Horace was
the heir. Naturally, she supposed that Horace was the favorite, and that
the old man was displeased with Percival. She concluded that the small
income of which the latter had spoken was probably a grudging allowance
from Mr. Thorne. His grandfather protected and patronized him now, and no
doubt it would be in Horace's power to protect and patronize him hereafter.
Lottie hardly knew what she dreamed or wished, but she felt that she should
indeed be avenged if the dole might in any way be regulated by her caprice,
given or withheld according to the mood of the moment.
Meanwhile, Percival drifted contentedly on, unconscious that Lottie had
vowed vengeance and Sissy devotion. Mr. Thorne went about with an air of
furtive triumph, as if he were tasting the sweetness of having outwitted
somebody. Horace divided his time between divers pleasures, but contrived
to run down to Fordborough once just before he went yachting with a friend.
He took to letter-writing with praiseworthy regularity, and yet his
accustomed correspondents were curiously unaware of his sudden energy. He
too had his look of triumph sometimes, but it was uneasy triumph, as if he
were not absolutely certain that some one might not have outwitted him.
Oliver Blake on board the good ship Curlew had passed the period of
sea-sickness, and was flirting desperately with a lively fellow-passenger,
while Addie followed him with anxious thoughts. About this time his father
went in secret to consult a London doctor, and came away with a grave face
and a tender softening of his heart toward his only son. A visit to his
lawyer ensued, and of this also Mrs. Blake knew nothing. The girls played
croquet as before, Lottie won the ivory mallet on the great field-day of
the Fordborough club, and Mrs. Rawlinson and Miss Lloyd hated her with
their sweetest smiles. Week after week of glorious weather went by.
Brackenhill lay stretched in the sleepy golden sunshine, and the leaves in
Langley Wood, quivering against the unclouded blue, had lost the freshness
of the early summer. The shadows and the sadness were to come.