of that clouded form which ancient schools and modern plagiarists call
sometimes "Circumstance," sometimes "Chance," sometimes "Fate," all the
guilt due to his own wilful abuse of irrevocable hours.

With this consolatory creed came, of necessity--the devil's grand luxury,
Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another man, or I
accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!" and the
logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to folly--to retort on the
man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you. Of all
our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest
a devil? For what is a devil?--A being whose sole work on earth is some
revenge on God!

Jasper Losely was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the
vain are--combative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal
spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and
egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to
hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a
passion not native to it. Jasper had expected so much from his marriage
with the great man's daughter--counted so thoroughly on her power to
obtain pardon and confer wealth--and his disappointment had been so keen
--been accompanied with such mortification--that he regarded the man whom
he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But not till
now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite vengeance. So
long as there was a chance that he could extort from Darrell the money
that was the essential necessary to his life, he checked his thoughts
whenever they suggested a profitless gratification of rage. But now that
Darrell had so scornfully and so inexorably spurned all concession--now
that nothing was to be wrung from him except by force--force and
vengeance came together in his projects. And yet even in the daring