But if in his pain he thirsted for revenge
upon Belle, who would have none of him, how much more did he desire to
be avenged upon Edward Cossey, who, as it were, had in sheer
wantonness robbed him of the one good thing he had? It made him mad to
think that this man, to whom he knew himself to be in every way
superior, should have had the power thus to injure him, and he longed
to pay him back measure for measure, and through /his/ heart's
affections to strike him as mortal a blow as he had himself received.
Mr. Quest was no doubt a bad man; his whole life was a fraud, he was
selfish and unscrupulous in his schemes and relentless in their
execution, but whatever may have been the measure of his iniquities,
he was not doomed to wait for another world to have them meted out to
him again. His life, indeed, was full of miseries, the more keenly
felt because of the high pitch and capacity of his nature, and perhaps
the sharpest of them all was the sickening knowledge that had it not
been for that one fatal error of his boyhood, that one false step down
the steep of Avernus, he might have been a good and even a great man.
Just now, however, his load was a little lightened, and he was able to
devote himself to his money-making and to the weaving of the web that
was to destroy his rival, Edward Cossey, with a mind a little less
preoccupied with other cares.
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