I will have no more of this. Understand, once
for all, that there is an impassable gulf between your life and mine.
I do not doubt that you will make yourself President, but whatever
or wherever you are, never speak to me or recognize me again!"
He glared a moment into her face with a sort of blind rage, and
seemed about to say more, when she swept past him, and before he
realized it, he was alone.
Overmastered by passion, but conscious that he was powerless,
Ratcliffe, after a moment's hesitation, left the room and the house.
He let himself out, shutting the front door behind him, and as he
stood on the pavement old Baron Jacobi, who had special reasons
for wishing to know how Mrs. Lee had recovered from the fatigue
and excitements of the ball, came up to the spot.
A single glance at Ratcliffe showed him that something had gone
wrong in the career of that great man, whose fortunes he always
followed with so bitter a sneer of contempt. Impelled by the spirit
of evil always at his elbow, the Baron seized this moment to sound
the depth of his friend's wound. They met at the door so closely
that recognition was inevitable, and Jacobi, with his worst smile,
held out his hand, saying at the same moment with diabolic
malignity:
"I hope I may offer my felicitations to your Excellency!"
Ratcliffe was glad to find some victim on whom he could vent his
rage. He had a long score of humiliations to repay this man, whose
last insult was beyond all endurance.
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