“It is the judgment of God!”

CHAPTER XXX.

NEMESIS.

Men, according to the old Greek, “are the sport of the gods,” who, enthroned on high Olympus, put evil desires into the hearts of mortals; and when evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made by their victims to escape a relentless deity called Nemesis, who exacted a penalty for their evil deeds.  It was no doubt very amusing—­to the gods—­but it is questionable if the men found it so.  They had their revenge, however, for weary of plaguing puny mortals, who whimpered and cried when they saw they could not escape, the inevitable Nemesis turned her attention from actors to spectators, and made a clean sweep of the whole Olympian hierarchy.  She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues, and after she had completed her malicious work, found that she had, vulgarly speaking, been cutting off her nose to spite her face, for she, too, became an object of derision and of disbelief, and was forced to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated the other deities.  But men found out that she had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge.  Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves:  on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already settled by Fate.  After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions.  Set up any idol you please upon which to lay the blame of unhappy lives and baffled ambitions, but the true cause is to be found in men themselves.  Every action, good or bad, which we do has its corresponding reward, and Mark Frettlby found it so, for the sins of his youth were now being punished in his old age.  No doubt he had sinned gaily enough in that far-off time when life’s cup was still brimming with wine, and no asp hid among the roses; but Nemesis had been an unseen spectator of all his thoughtless actions, and now she came to demand her just dues.  He felt somewhat as Faust must have felt when Mephistopheles suggested a visit to Hades, in repayment of those years of magic youth and magic power.  So long ago it seemed since he had married Rosanna Moore, that he almost persuaded himself that it had been only a dream—­a pleasant dream, with a disagreeable awakening.  When she had left him he had tried to forget her, recognising how unworthy she was of a good man’s love.  He heard that she had died in a London hospital, and with a passionate sigh for a perished love, he had dismissed her from his thoughts for ever.  His second marriage had turned out a happy one, and he regretted the death of his wife deeply.  Afterwards,