"What else does the text say? We have to solve the next riddle quickly."
As an amateur archaeologist keen on history, Mortimer should savor every moment he has to read these old pages, but he interrupts Elisabeth's comments impatiently. Later, of course, he will rethink and appreciate each word, but for now he wants to forget the feelings that this reading has awakened in him.
The foremost one is the blackest jealousy. In this world of too-stringent rules and rigid civil statuses, he cannot, like the Bard, obey his heart's desire: to forever couple the names of Blake and Mortimer.