The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Strange Revenge. 515
was not indisposed to consider whether yielding to self-
denial and duty might not be the more profitable part.
" A man should, at all hazards, and regardless of con-
sequences, marry the woman he loves best." So had the
Professor said, in that calm scholarl)- way of his. But
could he wholly disregard consequences ? What if his
desertion broke poor Flora's heart and ruined her happiness
for life ? It could not then be argued that—supposing
Miss Somerton accepted him—two had been made happy
at the expense of one, because the knowledge of what he
had done would haunt him as a nightmare !
In the gloom of the wood he leaned himself against a
fir tree, and gazed vacantly at the bushes in front, while
these thoughts gnawed at him in the brain-wearing way of
an insolvable problem. How did the matter stand ? Let
him begin over again. He was passionately in love with
Julia ! He said the name aloud for the first time, and
started at the unfamiliarity of the sound. Hitherto it had
always been Flo. Charming as she had always made her-
self to him, and courting, though she invariably seemed to
do, his society, there was something about the Professor's
daughter which had kept him unapproachably at arm's
length. If he proposed, she might refuse him—fact num-
ber two. In that case could he fall back upon Flora ?
She might, in the circumstances, fling his ring in his face,
which she would be quite entitled to do; then there was no
doubt but that David was in love with Flora ; and so on
he argued in a growing maze of perplexity—there would
be a deuce of a row with the laird ; it would upset the family
plan ; the whole country would get hold of the story ; he
would get laughed at and spurned, while Flora would be
sympathised with, pitied, and petted ; he would be
denounced as a flirt and a profligate, unworthy of the confidence
of any decent woman in the country-side ; he
would not have a dog's life of it ; he would—but here
Richard's reflections became a sort of chaotic, and as a
relief to his feelings he seized a promising young fir tree and
tore it clean up by the roots, with a teeth-grinding chuckle.