Promises Fulfilled

He did her that justice, though all the time it would
have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem.
It was this that made the misery--that he passionately loved her,
and thought her, even with all her faults, more lovely and more
excellent than any other woman; yet he deemed her so attached to
some other man, so led away by her affection for him as to
violate her truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her,
was a proof how blindly she loved another--this dark, slight,
elegant, handsome man--while he himself was rough, and stern, and
strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce
jealousy.

He thought of that look, that attitude!--how he would
have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond
detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical
way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now
he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man
she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of
her words--'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she
would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He
shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from
them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had
looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.