GENERALLY deliberate crimes are followed by some great punishment; but they are also often attended in their course by briefer chastisements--single strokes from the whip that holds the round dozen in reserve.

These precursors of the grand expiation are sharp but kindly lashes, for they tend to whip the man out of the wrong road.
Such a stroke fell on Richard Bassett: he saw Bella Bruce sweep past him, clinging to her husband, and shuddering at himself.

For this, then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter.

The only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the coveted inheritance.
The man crept home, and sat by his little fireside, crushed.

Indeed, from that hour he disappeared, and drank his bitter cup alone.
After a while it transpired in the village that he was very ill.