Had he been a Turkish Bashaw, he would doubtless have tied the offending beauty up in a sack and dropped her into the Bosphorus; had he been a Russian boyar, he would have done his best to get her exiled to Siberia; but, as he was neither the one nor the other, and was in his present position quite unable to treat her as cruelly as he wished, with devilish ingenuity he hit upon the only mode in which he could hope to gratify his petty spite against a woman, whose only crime was that she did not admire him as much as he admired himself. The Count’s little scheme of revenge was not complex, as he merely intended to call upon Justinian to keep his word, and force his daughter into the marriage, and, once she was his wife, punish her in a way of which he felt himself thoroughly capable, that is, by worrying her to death. A petty, spiteful, narrow-minded man like the Greek had quite a gift in annoying those people whom he disliked, and by assiduously exercising this ignoble talent, could hope to render unbearable the life of even the happiest and most long-suffering person. Besides, if he grew tired of Helena, he could easily force her to leave Melnos, for her father was so old that he would soon be in his dotage, and thus could not protect the girl, in which case Caliphronas would be free to act as his spiteful nature dictated. As to Justinian’s breaking faith with him, such a thing never entered into the Count’s mind for a moment, and, scoundrel as he was himself, he hardly dreamed that any one would be astute enough to beat him with his own weapons, least of all the Demarch, who had hitherto acted towards him in a strictly honorable way. Strong diseases, however, require strong remedies, and, had the deceiving of Caliphronas not been imperative for the salvation of the island, Justinian would certainly not have stooped to such duplicity. Caliphronas, therefore, ready to betray the Demarch if the fancy took him, never thought the Demarch would betray him, and thus relied blindly on the promise of the forced marriage being fulfilled, in which case this consummate scamp decided to sacrifice Helena in the most painful manner which he could devise, for the gratification of his wounded pride.