A Man’s Justice and a Woman’s Mercy
“Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
“Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline’s lover. It was not that he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk. Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it because he did not love her?
“I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr. Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short sidelong glances at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an explanation of her engagement.