It appeared, indeed,
that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had
actually sought the love of Alice, who also had betrayed an
undefinable, but powerful interest in the unknown youth. The latter,
in spite of his passion for Alice, seemed to return the loathful
antipathy of her brother; the similarity of their dispositions made
them like joint possessors of an individual nature, which could not
become wholly the property of one, unless by the extinction of the
other. At last, with the same devil in each bosom, they chanced to
meet, they two on a lonely road. While Leonard spoke, the wizard had
sat listening to what he already knew, yet with tokens of
pleasurable interest, manifested by flashes of expression across his
vacant features, by grisly smiles and by a word here and there,
mysteriously filling up some void in the narrative. But when the young
man told how Walter Brome had taunted him with indubitable proofs of
the shame of Alice, and, before the triumphant sneer could vanish from
his face, had died by her brother's hand, the wizard laughed aloud.
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