Wentworth, meanwhile, hearing the noise, and aware of his friend’s exit, took no heed of either, but sat trying to compose his mind to think of the new complication in which he found himself. Presently the deep sense of Harrington’s splendid magnanimity in so joyfully giving up the woman he loved, rose upon him in contrast with his own passionate envy and jealousy when he thought him the lover of Emily, and with the tears springing to his eyes, he felt as if he were the meanest man that ever breathed. To go and fling his arms around Harrington, ask his forgiveness, and explain the whole matter, was his first impulse. Then came the consideration that in doing this, he must own that he loved Emily, for had he not said that he was in love with one? and he must own that she had played the coquette with him, and left him with a wounded heart. He could not do it. Pride forbade it. But what should he do? He could not leave Harrington in error, and such an error! Yet how explain that loving one of the two, he did not love Muriel, nor yet Emily. Altogether, Wentworth was in a dilemma! Vainly revolving the matter for a few moments, he finally came to the desperate resolution so say nothing at present, but wait until he could be alone, and then think what course he could pursue to extricate himself from this embroilment. The clear remembrance came to his mind how sedulously Emily had been wooing Harrington of late. Acquitting him now of all knowledge or blame in this respect, his censure gathered into a fiercer focus on her. It was plain that, having played the heartless coquette with him, she was trying the same game on his friend. A regular Lady Clara Vere de Vere, he thought, remembering the haughty beauty dowered with manly scorn in Tennyson’s poem. Fiery rage at Emily contended in his soul with fiery love for her. Gnashing his teeth with fury, scorning himself that he could love her and she so false and base, scorning himself that he could hate her when he so loved her, he walked up and down the room for a minute or two; then suddenly, with a violent effort, grew cool, and picking up his hat from the floor, went out into the yard. He did not see Harrington at first, but stepping around the corner of the house, he caught sight of him, and all his passionate agitation faded away in surprise as he became aware of his friend’s occupation. Harrington was stooping down in an angle of the garden near a large square box set on end, rubbing away with a gloved hand at the back of an old, weak, white dog, the same Wentworth had seen tormented in the street that morning. Actually, thought Wentworth, he went back to take that forsaken brute home with him! “What in thunder are you doing, Harrington?” he exclaimed, approaching the scene of his friend’s operations. Harrington started, and turned his glowing face with a half ashamed smile upon Wentworth, then continued to rub the dog’s back.