"Strong but not unnatural, I think. You, to whom I told the story when I first knew you, will remember what my feelings were towards--towards that lady. You will remember how entirely I imagined my life bound up in hers, my happiness centred on all she might say or do. You saw what happened--how she flung me aside at the very first opportunity, with scant ceremony and shallow excuses, careless what effect her treachery might have had upon me." "It was all for the best, lad, as it turned out." "As it turned out, yes! But how did she know that, when she did it? Had she known that it would have turned out for the worst, for the very worst, would she have stayed her hand and altered her purpose? Not she." "I don't like to see you vindictive, boy; recollect she's a woman, and that once you were fond of her." "I am not vindictive, as I take it; and when I think of her treatment of me, the recollection that I was fond of her is not very likely to have a softening effect. See here, old friend: in cold blood, and with due deliberation, Marian Ashurst extinguished what was then the one light in my sufficiently dreary life. Fortune has given me the chance, I think, of returning the compliment, and I intend to do it." Jack Byrne turned uneasily in his chair; it was evident that his sentiments were not in accord with those of his friend. After a minute's pause he said, "Even supposing that the old eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth retribution were allowable--which I am by no means disposed to grant, especially where women are concerned--are you quite sure that in adopting it you are getting at what you wish to attain? You have never said so, but it must be as obvious to you as it is to me that Mrs. Creswell does not care for her husband. Do you think, then, she will be particularly influenced by a matter in which his personal vanity is alone involved?" Joyce smiled somewhat grimly. "My dear old friend, it was Mrs. Creswell's ambition that dealt me what might have been my _coup de grâce_. My anxiety about this contest at grimly springs from my desire to wound Mrs. Creswell's ambition. My knowledge of that lady is sufficient to prove to me, as clearly as though I were in her most sacred confidence, that she is most desirous that her husband should be returned to Parliament. The few words that were dropped by that idiot Bokenham the other day pointed to this, but I should have been sure of it if I had not heard them. After all, it is the natural result, and what might have been expected. During her poverty her prayer was for money. Money acquired, another want takes its place, and so it will be to the end of the chapter."