He had had two enemies, and between them they had worked his ruin. These were Colonel Osborne and Bozzle. It may be doubted whether he did not hate the latter the more strongly of the two. He knew now that Bozzle had been untrue to him, but his disgust did not spring from that so much as from the feeling that he had defiled himself by dealing with the man. Though he was quite assured that he had been right in his first cause of offence, he knew that he had fallen from bad to worse in every step that he had taken since. Colonel Osborne had marred his happiness by vanity, by wicked intrigue, by a devilish delight in doing mischief; but he, he himself, had consummated the evil by his own folly. Why had he not taken Colonel Osborne by the throat, instead of going to a lowborn, vile, mercenary spy for assistance? He hated himself for what he had done;—and yet it was impossible that he should yield.
It was impossible that he should yield;—but it was yet open to him to sacrifice himself. He could not go back to his wife and say that he was wrong; but he could determine that the destruction should fall upon him and not upon her. If he gave up his child and then died—died, alone, without any friend near him, with no word of love in his ears, in that solitary and miserable abode which he had found for himself—then it would at least be acknowledged that he had expiated the injury that he had done. She would have his wealth, his name, his child to comfort her—and would be troubled no longer by demands for that obedience which she had sworn at the altar to give him, and which she had since declined to render to him. Perhaps there was some feeling that the coals of fire would be hot upon her head when she should think how much she had received from him and how little she had done for him. And yet he loved her, with all his heart, and would even yet dream of bliss that might be possible with her—had not the terrible hand of irresistible Fate come between them and marred it all. It was only a dream now. It could be no more than a dream. He put out his thin wasted hands and looked at them, and touched the hollowness of his own cheeks, and coughed that he might hear the hacking sound of his own infirmity, and almost took glory in his weakness. It could not be long before the coals of fire would be heaped upon her head.
“Louey,” he said at last, addressing the child who had sat for an hour gazing through the window without stirring a limb or uttering a sound; “Louey, my boy, would you like to go back to mamma?” The child turned round on the floor, and fixed his eyes on his father’s face, but made no immediate reply. “Louey, dear, come to papa and tell him. Would it be nice to go back to mamma?” And he stretched out his hand to the boy. Louey got up, and approached slowly and stood between his father’s knees. “Tell me, darling;—you understand what papa says?”
“Altro!” said the boy, who had been long enough among Italian servants to pick up the common words of the language. Of course he would like to go back. How indeed could it be otherwise?
“Then you shall go to her, Louey.”
“Today, papa?”
“Not today, nor tomorrow.”
“But the day after?”
“That is sufficient. You shall go. It is not so bad with you that one day more need be a sorrow to you. You shall go—and then you will never see your father again!” Trevelyan as he said this drew his hands away so as not to touch the child. The little fellow had put out his arm, but seeing his father’s angry gesture had made no further attempt at a caress. He feared his father from the bottom of his little heart, and yet was aware that it was his duty to try to love papa. He did not understand the meaning of that last threat, but slunk back, passing his untouched toys, to the window, and there seated himself again, filling his mind with the thought that when two more long long days should have crept by, he should once more go to his mother.
Trevelyan had tried his best to be soft and gentle to his child. All that he had said to his wife of his treatment of the boy had been true to the letter. He had spared no personal trouble, he had done all that he had known how to do, he had exercised all his intelligence to procure amusement for the boy;—but Louey had hardly smiled since he had been taken from his mother. And now that he was told that he was to go and never see his father again, the tidings were to him simply tidings of joy. “There is a curse upon me,” said Trevelyan; “it is written down in the book of my destiny that nothing shall ever love me!”
He went out from the house, and made his way down by the narrow path through the olives and vines to the bottom of the hill in front of the villa. It was evening now, but the evening was very hot, and though the olive trees stood in long rows, there was no shade. Quite at the bottom of the hill there was a little sluggish muddy brook, along the sides of which the reeds grew thickly and the dragonflies were playing on the water. There was nothing attractive in the spot, but he was weary, and sat himself down on the dry hard bank which had been made by repeated clearing of mud from
