"
By this time Mrs. Vane's light foot was heard on the stair, and Triplet
sank into a chair. "They will tear one another to pieces," said he.
A tap came to the door.
He looked fearfully round for the woman whom jealousy had so speedily
turned from an angel to a fiend; and saw with dismay that she had
actually had the hardihood to slip round and enter the picture again. She
had not quite arranged herself when her rival knocked.
Triplet dragged himself to the door. Before he opened it, he looked
fearfully over his shoulder, and received a glance of cool, bitter,
deadly hostility, that boded ill both for him and his visitor. Triplet's
apprehensions were not unreasonable. His benefactress and this sweet lady
were rivals!
Jealousy is a dreadful passion, it makes us tigers. The jealous always
thirst for blood. At any moment when reason is a little weaker than
usual, they are ready to kill the thing they hate, or the thing they
love.
Any open collision between these ladies would scatter ill consequences
all round. Under such circumstances, we are pretty sure to say or do
something wicked, silly, or unreasonable. But what tortured Triplet more
than anything was his own particular notion that fate doomed him to
witness a formal encounter between these two women, and of course an
encounter of such a nature as we in our day illustrate by "Kilkenny
cats.
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