The vindictive love of opposition and lust for triumph is one of the most powerful of motives.

Men will brave more from an empty desire to have their own way, than they could be persuaded to face by the most substantial motives.
Smith Westcott was not a man to die for a sentiment, but for the time he had the semblance of a most devoted lover.

He bent everything to the re-conquest of Katy Charlton.

His pride served him instead of any higher passion, and he plotted by night and managed by day to get his affairs into a position in which he could leave.

He meant to follow Albert and Katy, and somewhere and somehow, by working on Katy's sympathies, to carry off the "stakes," as he expressed it.