Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-01-01
CHAPTER TX.
THE SHADOW OF RuIN.

CHAPTER TX.
 THE SHADOW OF RUIN.
 MT. Quest departed to his vestry meeting | with smile upon his thin, gentlemanly 1 looking face and rage and bitterness in his 1 heart.
 II caught her that time," he said to him. self; "she can do a good deal in the way of deceit, but she can't keep the blood out of | her cheeks when sine hears that fellows name. But she is a clever woman, Belle is; how well she managed that little business of the luncheon, and how we'll she fought her case when once she got me in e cleft stick about Edith and that money of hers, and made good terms, too. Ahi that's the worst of it; she has the whip hand of me there; if l could ruin her she could ruin me, and it's no use cutting off ones nose to spite your face. We'll, my fine lady," he went on, with an ominous flash of his gray eyes, II shall be even with you yet. Give you enough rope, and you will hang yourself. You love this fellow, know that and it will go hard if 1 can't make him break your heart for you. Bah! you don't know the sort of stuff men are made of. If only did not happen to be in love with you myself l should not care. f-ah! here l am at the church."
 The human animal Is q very complicated machine, and can conduct the working of an extraordinary number of different interests and sets of ideas almost, if not entirely, simultaneously. For instance, Mir. Quest seated at the right hand of the rector in the 1 ySStry room of the beautiful old Boisingham church, and engaged in an animated and | even warm discussion with the sccicr curate on the details of Fourteenth century church work, in which he clearly took lively in- terest and understood far better than did the curate-would have been exceedingly difficult | to identify with the scheming, vindictiye creature whom we have just followed up the church path. But after all, that is the way of human nature, although it may not be the way of those who try to draw it and who love to paint the villain black as the evil one and the virtuous heroine so radiant that we begin to fancy we can hear the whispering of her wings. Few people are altogether good or altogether bad; indeed, it is proh- able that the vast majority are neither good nor bad-they have not the strength to be the one or the other. Hero and there, how ever, we do meet a spirit with sufficient will and originality to press the scale down this way or that, though even then the opposing force, be 1t good or evil, is constantly striv- ing to bring the balance equal. Even the most wicked men have their redeeming points and their rights and their righteous instincts, nor arc their thoughts continually fixed upon iniquity. MT. Quest, for instance, one of the evil geniuses of this history was, where his plots and passions were not imme- diately concerned, man of eminently geuer- ous and refined tendencies. Many were the good turns, contradictory as it may seem, that he had done to his poorer neighbors; he had even been known to forego his bills of costs, which is about the highest and rarest exhibition of earthly virtue that can be ex- pected from Q lawyer. He was, moreover, eminently cultured man, a reader of the classics, in translations if not in the originals g man with 0 fine taste in fiction and poetry, and really sound and ripe archaeological knowledge, especially where sacred build ings were concerned. All his instincts, moreover, were toward responsibility. His most burning ambition was to secure a high position in the county in which he lived, and to be chased among the resident gentry. He hated his lawyers work, and longed to accumulate sufficient means to be able to give it the good by and to indulge himself in an existence of luxurious and learned leisure. Such as he was he had made himself, for he was the son of poor and inferior country dentist, and had begun life with good education, it Is true, which he chiefly owed to his own exertions, but with nothing else Had his nature been Q temperate nature, with
 
 | upon, instead of balance of evil, he was @ man who might have gone very far, indeed, for in addition to his natural ability he had great power of work. But unfortunately this was not the case; his in- stincts on the whole were evil instincts, and his passions-whether of hate, or love, or greed-when they seized him, did so with ex- traordinary violence, rendering for the time being utterly callous to the rights or feelings of others, provided that he attained his end. In short. had he been born to good position and large fortune, it is quite possible, pro- yiding always that bis strong passions had not at some period of his life led him ir- remediably astray, that he would have lived virtuous and respected, and died in good odor, leaving behind him happy memory. But fate had placed him in antagonism with the world, and yet had endowed him with a gnawing desire to be of the world, as 1t ap- peared most desirable to him; and then, to complete his ruin, circumstances had thrown him into temptations from which inexperi- ence and the headlong strength of his passions gave him no opportunity to escape.
 It may at first appear strange that man so calculating and whose desires seemed to be fixed upon such a material end as the ac- quirement, by artifce or even fraud, of the wealth which he coveted, should also nour- AeAA All HID ne<A1 So plCCeT uaIIeu ana so keen thirst for revenge upon Q woman as MT. Quest undoubtedly did toward bis beau tiful wife. It would have seemed more prob able that he would have left heroics alone and attempted to turn his wife's folly into means of wealth and self advancement; and this would no doubt have been so had Mrs. Quests estimate of his motives in marrying her been an entirely correct one. She had told Edward Cossey, 1t will be remembered, that her husband had married her for her money, the e1O,oo0 of which he stood so badly in need. Now this was the truth to a certain extent, and a certain extent only. He had wanted the e10,OO0, in fact, at tho moment money was necessary to him. But. and this his wife had never known or real