"I think I must go and look for my husband now. I
left him some time ago on account of a headache. I wanted to get away from
the noise and confusion on the river-bank."
"Is it wise to return to the noise and confusion so soon?" asked Mr.
Fairfax, who had no idea of bringing this interview to so sudden a close.
He had been waiting for such a meeting for a long time; waiting with a kind
of sullen patience, knowing that it must some sooner or later, without
any special effort of his; waiting with a strange mixture of feelings and
sentiments--disappointed passion, wounded pride, mortified vanity, an angry
sense of wrong that had been done to him by Clarissa's marriage, an eager
desire to see her again, which was half a lover's yearning, half an enemy's
lust of vengeance.
He was not a good man. Such a life as he had led is a life that no man can
lead with impunity. To say that he might still be capable of a generous
action or unselfish impulse, would be to say much for him, given the story
of his manhood. A great preacher of to-day has declared, that he could
never believe the man who said he had never been tempted. For George
Fairfax life had been crowded with temptations; and he had not made even
the feeblest stand against the tempter. He had been an eminently fortunate
man in all the trifles which make up the sum of a frivolous existence; and
though his successes had been for the most part small social triumphs, they
had not been the less agreeable.
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