He felt a pleasant sense of power.

He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled--as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure.

Which was it to be?
He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too idle to pursue.

Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned..