He never
complained of illness, and beyond a slight lassitude, he did not seem
to have anything the matter with him. This would not do. It behoved
Carrington to expedite matters. His project was to accomplish the death
of Douglas Dale by poison, throwing the burthen of suspicion--should
suspicion arise--upon Paulina. To advance this purpose, he had
industriously circulated reports of the most injurious character
respecting her; so that Douglas Dale, if he had not been blinded and
engrossed by his love, must have seen that he was regarded by the men
whom he was in the habit of meeting even more coldly and curiously than
when he had first boldly announced his engagement to Madame Durski. He
made it known that Douglas Dale had made a will, by which the whole of
his disposable property was bequeathed to Paulina, and circulated a
rumour that the Austrian widow was utterly averse to the intended
marriage, in feeling, and was only contracting it from interested
motives.
"If Dale was only out of the way, and his heir had come into the money,
she would rather have Reginald," was a spiteful saying current among
those who knew the lady and her suitor, and which had its unsuspected
origin with Carrington. Supposing Dale to come to his death by poison,
and that fact to be ascertained, who would be suspected but the woman
who had everything to gain by his death, whose acknowledged lover was
his next heir, and who succeeded by his will to all the property which
did not go immediately into the possession of that acknowledged lover?
The plan was admirably laid, and there was no apparent hitch in it, and
it only remained now for Carrington to accelerate his proceedings.
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