He was not to know that Wilding, bruised and wounded by Miss Westmacott's scorn of him, had reached that borderland where love and hate are so merged that they are scarce to be distinguished.

Embittered by the slights she had put upon him--slights which his sensitive, lover's fancy had magnified a hundredfold--Anthony Wilding's frame of mind was grown peculiar.

Of his love she would have none; his kindness she seemingly despised.

So be it; she should taste his cruelty.

If she scorned his wooing and forbade him to pursue it, at least it was not hers to deny him the power to hurt; and in hurting her that would not be loved by him some measure of fierce and bitter consolation seemed to await him.
He realized, perhaps, not quite all this--and to the unworthiness of it all he gave no thought.