useless to complicate his already confused ideas any further, by taking
into consideration the expediency of such a connection. There was quite
enough to worry him without that; and by some inconceivable stupidity it
never entered his head that, while he was really so completely incapable
of altering his mind, other people should seriously think he was doing
it.

Yet as he read Mrs. Costello's letter over a second time, he began to
perceive something in its tone which seemed to say clearly--"Don't
flatter yourself that the matter rests at all with you. I have decided.
I am no longer your ally, but your opponent." At this a new element came
into play--anger.

He had been rather unreasonable before--now he became utterly so. "A
pretty sort of fellow she must think me, after all," he said to himself.
"I suppose she'd be afraid to trust Lucia to me now. However, if she
thinks I mean to be beaten that way, she'll find that she is mistaken."

He was walking up and down his room, and working himself up into a
greater ill-humour with every turn he made.

"If I could only get to Lucia herself," he went on thinking, "I should
see if I could not end the matter at once, one way or the other--that
fellow is clear out of the way now, and I believe I should have a
chance; but as for Mrs. Costello, she seems to think nothing at all of
throwing me over whenever it suits her."

Poor Maurice! he sat down to write to his father in a miserable
mood--Mr. Beresford had become suddenly and decidedly worse. The doctors
said positively that he was dying, and that a few days at the utmost