“Toll, I feel better, and I believe I’ll get up,” said the General.  “Let this vision sink deep into your soul.  Then give it wings, and speed it on its mission.  Remember that this is a vale of tears, and don’t set your affections on things below.  By-by!”

Talbot went down stairs, drawing on his gloves, and laughing.  Then he went out into the warm light, buttoned up his coat instinctively, as if to hide the plot he carried, jumped into his coupe, and went to his business.

Mr. Belcher dressed himself with more than his usual care, went to Mrs. Belcher’s room and inquired about his children, then went to his library, and drew forth from a secret drawer a little book.  He looked it over for a few minutes, then placed it in his packet, and went out.  The allusion that had been made to Mrs. Dillingham, and the assurance that he was popularly understood to be her lover, and the only man who was regarded by her with favor, intoxicated him, and his old passion came back upon him.

It was a strange manifestation of his brutal nature that at this moment of his trouble, and this epoch of his cruelty and crime, he longed for the comfort of a woman’s sympathy.  He was too much absorbed by his affairs to be moved by that which was basest in his regard for his beautiful idol.  If he could feel her hand upon his forehead; if she could tell him that she was sorry for him; if he could know that she loved him; ay, if he could be assured that this woman, whom he had believed to be capable of guilt, had prayed for him, it would have been balm to his heart.  He was sore with struggle, and guilt, and defeat.  He longed for love and tenderness.  As if he were a great bloody dog, just coming from the fight of an hour, in which he had been worsted, and seeking for a tender hand to pat his head, and call him “poor, good old fellow,” the General longed for a woman’s loving recognition.  He was in his old mood of self-pity.  He wanted to be petted, smoothed, commiserated, reassured; and there was only one woman in all the world from whom such ministry would be grateful.

He knew that Mrs. Dillingham had heard of his loss, for she heard of and read everything.  He wanted her to know that it had not shaken him.  He would not for the world have her suppose that he was growing poor.  Still to appear to her as a person of wealth and power; still to hold her confidence as a man of multiplied resources, was, perhaps, the deepest ambition that moved him.  He had found that he could not use her in the management of his affairs.  Though from the first, up to the period of her acquaintance with Harry Benedict, she had led him on to love her by every charm she possessed, and every art she knew, she had always refused to be debased by him in any way.