But while he looked, the thought rose up in his mind like waters from a poisoned fountain, that there was a deep plot laid to cheat him of the inheritance which by a double claim he meant to call his own.  Every day this ice-cold beauty, this dangerous, handsome cousin of his, went up to that place,—­that usher’s girl-trap.  Everyday,—­regularly now,—­it used to be different.  Did she go only to get out of his, her cousin’s, reach?  Was she not rather becoming more and more involved in the toils of this plotting Yankee?

If Mr. Bernard had shown himself at that moment a few rods in advance, the chances are that in less than one minute he would have found himself with a noose round his neck, at the heels of a mounted horseman.  Providence spared him for the present.  Mr. Richard rode his horse quietly round to the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the house.  He got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not sleep.  The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that a deep intrigue was going on which would end by bringing Elsie and the schoolmaster into relations fatal to all his own hopes.  With that ingenuity which always accompanies jealousy, he tortured every circumstance of the last few weeks so as to make it square with this belief.  From this vein of thought he naturally passed to a consideration of every possible method by which the issue he feared might be avoided.

Mr. Richard talked very plain language with himself in all these inward colloquies.  Supposing it came to the worst, what could be done then?  First, an accident might happen to the schoolmaster which should put a complete and final check upon his projects and contrivances.  The particular accident which might interrupt his career must, evidently, be determined by circumstances; but it must be of a nature to explain itself without the necessity of any particular person’s becoming involved in the matter.  It would be unpleasant to go into particulars; but everybody knows well enough that men sometimes get in the way of a stray bullet, and that young persons occasionally do violence to themselves in various modes,—­by firearms, suspension, and other means,—­in consequence of disappointment in love, perhaps, oftener than from other motives.  There was still another kind of accident which might serve his purpose.  If anything should happen to Elsie, it would be the most natural thing in the world that his uncle should adopt him, his nephew and only near relation, as his heir.  Unless, indeed, uncle Dudley should take it into his head to marry again.  In that case, where would he, Dick, be?  This was the most detestable complication which he could conceive of.  And yet he had noticed—­he could not help noticing—­that his uncle had been very attentive to, and, as it seemed, very much pleased with, that young woman from the school.  What did that mean?  Was it possible that he was going to take a fancy to her?