Calm, gentle, passionless, as he
appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice,
hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man,
which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal
had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted
friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse,
the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of
sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow,
hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and
forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless--to him, the
Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very
man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of
vengeance!
The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this
scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly,
if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which
Providence--using the avenger and his victim for its own
purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to
punish--had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he
could almost say, had been granted to him.
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