passed between us. Neither, after one preliminary difference had been
adjusted, did any subsequent disagreement take place between Mr. Sherwin
and me. This last element in the domestic tranquillity of North Villa
was, however, less attributable to his forbearance, or to mine, than to
the private interference of Mr. Mannion.

For some days after my interview with the managing clerk, at his
own house, I had abstained from calling his offered services into
requisition. I was not conscious of any reason for this course of
conduct. All that had been said, all that had happened during the night
of the storm, had produced a powerful, though vague impression on me.
Strange as it may appear, I could not determine whether my brief but
extraordinary experience of my new friend had attracted me towards him,
or repelled me from him. I felt an unwillingness to lay myself under an
obligation to him, which was not the result of pride, or false delicacy,
or sullenness, or suspicion--it was an inexplicable unwillingness, that
sprang from the fear of encountering some heavy responsibility; but of
what nature I could not imagine. I delayed and held back, by instinct;
and, on his side, Mr. Mannion made no further advances. He maintained
the same manner, and continued the same habits, during his intercourse
with the family at North Villa, which I had observed as characterising
him before I took shelter from the storm, in his house. He never
referred again to the conversation of that evening, when we now met.

Margaret's behaviour, when I mentioned to her Mr. Mannion's willingness
to be useful to us both, rather increased than diminished the vague
uncertainties which perplexed me, on the subject of accepting or
rejecting his overtures.

I could not induce her to show the smallest interest about him. Neither
his house, his personal appearance, his peculiar habits, or his secrecy
in relation to his early life--nothing, in short, connected with
him--appeared to excite her attention or curiosity in the slightest
degree. On the evening of his return from the continent, she had
certainly shown some symptoms of interest in his arrival at North Villa,
and some appearance of attention to him, when he joined our party. Now,
she seemed completely and incomprehensibly changed on this point. Her
manner became almost petulant, if I persisted long in making Mr. Mannion
a topic of conversation--it was as if she resented his sharing my
thoughts with her in the slightest degree. As to the difficult question
whether we should engage him in our interests or not, that was a matter
which she always seemed to think too trifling to be discussed between us
at all.

Ere long, however, circumstances decided me as to the course I should
take with Mr. Mannion.

A ball was given by one of Mr. Sherwin's rich commercial friends,
to which he announced his intention of taking Margaret. Besides the
jealousy which I felt--naturally enough, in my peculiar situation--at
the idea of my wife going out as Miss Sherwin, and dancing in the
character of a young unmarried lady with any young gentlemen who were
introduced to her, I had also the strongest possible desire to keep
Margaret out of the society of her own class, until my year's probation
was over, and I could hope to instal her permanently in the society of
my class. I had privately mentioned to her my ideas on this subject, and
found that she fully agreed with them. She was not wanting in ambition
to ascend to the highest degree in the social scale; and had already
begun to look with indifference on the society which was offered to her
by those in her own rank.

To Mr. Sherwin I could confide nothing of this. I could only object,
generally, to his taking Margaret out, when neither she nor I desired
it. He declared that she liked parties--that all girls did--that she
only pretended to dislike them, to please me--and that he had made no
engagement to keep her moping at home a whole year on my account. In the
case of the particular ball now under discussion, he was determined to
have his own way; and he bluntly told me as much.

Irritated by his obstinacy and gross want of consideration for my
defenceless position, I forgot all doubts and scruples; and privately
applied to Mr. Mannion to exert the influence which he had promised to
use, if I wished it, in my behalf.

The result was as immediate as it was conclusive. The very next evening,
Mr. Sherwin came to us with a note which he had just written, and
informed me that it was an excuse for Margaret's non-appearance at the
ball. He never mentioned Mr. Mannion's name, but sulkily and shortly
said, that he had reconsidered the matter, and had altered his first
decision for reasons of his own.

Having once taken a first step in the new direction, I soon followed it
up, without hesitation, by taking many others. Whenever I wished to call
oftener than once a-day at North Villa, I had but to tell Mr. Mannion,
and the next morning I found the permission immediately accorded to me
by the ruling power. The same secret machinery enabled me to regulate
Mr. Sherwin's incomings and outgoings, just as I chose, when Margaret
and I were together in the evening. I could feel almost certain, now,
of never having any one with us, but Mrs. Sherwin, unless I desired
it--which, as may be easily imagined, was seldom enough.

My new ally's ready interference for my advantage was exerted quietly,
easily, and as a matter of course. I never knew how, or when, he
influenced his employer, and Mr. Sherwin on his part, never breathed a
word of that influence to me. He accorded any extra privilege I might
demand, as if he acted entirely under his own will, little suspecting
how well I knew what was the real motive power which directed him.

I was the more easily reconciled to employing the services of Mr.
Mannion, by the great delicacy with which he performed them. He did
not allow me to think--he did not appear to think himself--that he was
obliging me in the smallest degree. He affected no sudden intimacy with
me; his manners never altered; he still persisted in not joining us in
the evening, but at my express invitation; and if I referred in any way
to the advantages I derived from his devotion to my interests, he always
replied in his brief undemonstrative way, that he considered himself the
favoured person, in being permitted to make his services of some use to
Margaret and me.

I had told Mr. Mannion, when I was leaving him on the night of the
storm, that I would treat his offers as the offers of a friend; and I
had now made good my words, much sooner and much more unreservedly than
I had ever intended, when we parted at his own house-door.

V.

The autumn was now over; the winter--a cold, gloomy winter--had fairly
come. Five months had nearly elapsed since Clara and my father had
departed for the country. What communication did I hold with them,
during that interval?

No personal communication with either--written communication only with
my sister. Clara's letters to me were frequent. They studiously avoided
anything like a reproach for my long absence; and were confined almost
exclusively to such details of country life as the writer thought likely
to interest me. Their tone was as affectionate--nay, more affectionate,
if possible--than usual; but Clara's gaiety and quiet humour, as a
correspondent, were gone. My conscience taught me only too easily and
too plainly how to account for this change--my conscience told me
who had altered the tone of my sister's letters, by altering all the
favourite purposes and favourite pleasures of her country life.

I was selfishly enough devoted to my own passions and my own interests,
at this period of my life; but I was not so totally dead to every one
of the influences which had guided me since childhood, as to lose
all thought of Clara and my father, and the ancient house that was
associated with my earliest and happiest recollections. Sometimes, even
in Margaret's beloved presence, a thought of Clara put away from me
all other thoughts. And, sometimes, in the lonely London house, I
dreamed--with the strangest sleeping oblivion of my marriage, and of all
the new interests which it had crowded into my life--of country rides
with my sister, and of quiet conversations in the old gothic library
at the Hall. Under such influences as these, I twice resolved to make
amends for my long absence, by joining my father and my sister in the
country, even though it were only for a few days--and, each time, I
failed in my resolution. On the second occasion, I had actually mustered
firmness enough to get as far as the railway station; and only at the
last moment faltered and hung back. The struggle that it cost me to
part for any length of time from Margaret, I had overcome; but the
apprehension, as vivid as it was vague, that something--I knew not
what--might happen to her in my absence, turned my steps backward at
starting. I felt heartily ashamed of my own weakness; but I yielded to
it nevertheless.

At last, a letter arrived from Clara, containing a summons to the
country, which I could not disobey.

"I have never asked you," she wrote, "to come and see us for my sake;
for I would not interfere with any of your interests or any of your
plans; but I now ask you to come here for your own sake--just for one
week, and no more, unless you like to remain longer. You remember papa
telling you, in your room in London, that he believed you kept some
secret from him. I am afraid this is preying on his mind: your long
absence is making him uneasy about you. He does not say so; but he never
sends any message, when I write; and if I speak about you, he always
changes the subject directly. Pray come here, and show yourself for a
few days--no questions will be asked, you may be sure. It will do so
much good; and will prevent--what I hope and pray may never happen--a
serious estrangement between papa and you. Recollect, Basil, in a month
or six weeks we shall come back to town; and then the opportunity will
be gone."

As I read these lines, I determined to start for the country at once,
while the effect of them was still fresh on my mind. Margaret, when
I took leave of her, only said that she should like to be going with
me--"it would be such a sight for her, to see a grand country house like
ours!" Mr. Sherwin laughed as coarsely as usual, at the difficulties
I made about only leaving his daughter for a week. Mrs. Sherwin very
earnestly, and very inaccountably as I then thought, recommended me not
to be away any longer than I had proposed. Mr. Mannion privately assured
me, that I might depend on him in my absence from North Villa, exactly
as I had always depended on him, during my presence there. It was
strange that his parting words should be the only words which soothed
and satisfied me on taking leave of London.

The winter afternoon was growing dim with the evening darkness, as I
drove up to the Hall. Snow on the ground, in the country, has always
a cheerful look to me. I could have wished to see it on the day of my
arrival at home; but there had been a thaw for the last week--mud and
water were all about me--a drizzling rain was falling--a raw, damp wind
was blowing--a fog was rising, as the evening stole on--and the ancient
leafless elms in the park avenue groaned and creaked above my head
drearily, as I approached the house.

My father received me with more ceremony than I liked. I had known, from
a boy, what it meant when he chose to be only polite to his own son.
What construction he had put on my long absence and my persistence in
keeping my secret from him, I could not tell; but it was evident that
I had lost my usual place in his estimation, and lost it past regaining
merely by a week's visit. The estrangement between us, which my sister
had feared, had begun already.

I had been chilled by the desolate aspect of nature, as I approached the
Hall; my father's reception of me, when I entered the house, increased
the comfortless and melancholy impressions produced on my mind; it
required all the affectionate warmth of Clara's welcome, all the
pleasure of hearing her whisper her thanks, as she kissed me, for my
readiness in following her advice, to restore my equanimity. But even
then, when the first hurry and excitement of meeting had passed away, in
spite of her kind words and looks, there was something in her face which
depressed me. She seemed thinner, and her constitutional paleness was
more marked than usual. Cares and anxieties had evidently oppressed
her--was I the cause of them?

The dinner that evening proceeded very heavily and gloomily. My father
only talked on general and commonplace topics, as if a mere acquaintance
had been present. When my sister left us, he too quitted the room, to
see some one who had arrived on business. I had no heart for the company
of the wine bottles, so I followed Clara.

At first, we only spoke of her occupations since she had been in the
country; I was unwilling, and she forbore, to touch on my long stay in
London, or on my father's evident displeasure at my protracted absence.
There was a little restraint between us, which neither had the courage
to break through. Before long, however, an accident, trifling enough
in itself, obliged me to be more candid; and enabled her to speak
unreservedly on the subject nearest to her heart.

I was seated opposite to Clara, at the fire-place, and was playing
with a favourite dog which had followed me into the room. While I was
stooping towards the animal, a locket containing some of Margaret's
hair, fell out of its place in my waistcoat, and swung towards my sister
by the string which attached it round my neck. I instantly hid it again;
but not before Clara, with a woman's quickness, had detected the trinket
as something new, and drawn the right inference, as to the use to which
I devoted it.

An expression of surprise and pleasure passed over her face; she rose,
and putting her hands on my shoulders, as if to keep me still in the
place I occupied, looked at me intently.

"Basil!" she exclaimed, "if that is all the secret you have been keeping
from us, how glad I am! When I see a new locket drop out of my brother's
waistcoat--" she continued, observing that I was too confused to
speak--"and when I find him colouring very deeply, and hiding it again
in a great hurry, I should be no true woman if I did not make my own
discoveries, and begin to talk about them directly."

I made an effort--a very poor one--to laugh the thing off. Her
expression grew serious and thoughtful, while she still fixed her eyes
on me. She took my hand gently, and whispered in my ear: "Are you going
to be married, Basil? Shall I love my new sister almost as much as I
love you?"

At that moment the servant came in with tea. The interruption gave me
a minute for consideration. Should I tell her all? Impulse answered,
yes--reflection, no. If I disclosed my real situation, I knew that I
must introduce Clara to Margaret. This would necessitate taking her
privately to Mr. Sherwin's house, and exposing to her the humiliating
terms of dependence and prohibition on which I lived with my own wife. A
strange medley of feelings, in which pride was uppermost, forbade me
to do that. Then again, to involve my sister in my secret, would be to
involve her with me in any consequences which might be produced by
its disclosure to my father. The mere idea of making her a partaker in
responsibilities which I alone ought to bear, was not to be entertained
for a moment. As soon as we were left together again, I said to her:

"Will you not think the worse of me, Clara, if I leave you to draw your
own conclusions from what you have seen? only asking you to keep strict
silence on the subject to every one. I can't speak yet, love, as I
wish to speak: you will know why, some day, and say that my reserve was
right. In the meantime, can you be satisfied with the assurance, that
when the time comes for making my secret known, you shall be the first
to know it--the first I put trust in?"

"As you have not starved my curiosity altogether," said Clara, smiling,
"but have given it a little hope to feed on for the present, I think,
woman though I am, I can promise all you wish. Seriously, Basil," she
continued, "that telltale locket of yours has so pleasantly brightened
some very gloomy thoughts of mine about you, that I can now live happily
on expectation, without once mentioning your secret again, till you give
me leave to do so."

Here my father entered the room, and we said no more. His manner towards
me had not altered since dinner; and it remained the same during the
week of my stay at the Hall. One morning, when we were alone, I took
courage, and determined to try the dangerous ground a little, with a
view towards my guidance for the future; but I had no sooner begun by
some reference to my stay in London, and some apology for it, than he
stopped me at once.

"I told you," he said, gravely and coldly, "some months ago, that I had
too much faith in your honour to intrude on affairs which you choose
to keep private. Until you have perfect confidence in me, and can speak
with complete candour, I will hear nothing. You have not that confidence
now--you speak hesitatingly--your eyes do not meet mine fairly and
boldly. I tell you again, I will hear nothing which begins with such
common-place excuses as you have just addressed to me. Excuses lead to
prevarications, and prevarications to--what I will not insult you by
imagining possible in _your_ case. You are of age, and must know your
own responsibilities and mine. Choose at once, between saying nothing,
and saying all."

He waited a moment after he had spoken, and then quitted the room. If
he could only have known how I suffered, at that instant, under the base
necessities of concealment, I might have confessed everything; and he
must have pitied, though he might not have forgiven me.

This was my first and last attempt at venturing towards the revelation
of my secret to my father, by hints and half-admissions. As to boldly
confessing it, I persuaded myself into a sophistical conviction that
such a course could do no good, but might do much harm. When the wedded
happiness I had already waited for, and was to wait for still, through
so many months, came at last, was it not best to enjoy my married
life in convenient secrecy, as long as I could?--best, to abstain from
disclosing my secret to my father, until necessity absolutely obliged,
or circumstances absolutely invited me to do so? My inclinations
conveniently decided the question in the affirmative; and a decision of
any kind, right or wrong, was enough to tranquillise me at that time.

So far as my father was concerned, my journey to the country did no
good. I might have returned to London the day after my arrival at the
Hall, without altering his opinion of me--but I stayed the whole week
nevertheless, for Clara's sake.

In spite of the pleasure afforded by my sister's society, my visit was a
painful one. The selfish longing to be back with Margaret, which I could
not wholly repress; my father's coldness; and the winter gloom and rain
which confined us almost incessantly within doors, all tended in their
different degrees to prevent my living at ease in the Hall. But, besides
these causes of embarrassment, I had the additional mortification of
feeling, for the first time, as a stranger in my own home.

Nothing in the house looked to me what it used to look in former years.
The rooms, the old servants, the walks and views, the domestic animals,
all appeared to have altered, or to have lost something, since I had
seen them last. Particular rooms that I had once been fond of occupying,
were favourites no longer: particular habits that I had hitherto always
practised in the country, I could only succeed in resuming by an effort
which vexed and fretted me. It was as if my life had run into a new
channel since my last autumn and winter at the Hall, and now refused to
flow back at my bidding into its old course. Home seemed home no longer,
except in name.

As soon as the week was over, my father and I parted exactly as we had
met. When I took leave of Clara, she refrained from making any allusion
to the shortness of my stay; and merely said that we should soon meet
again in London. She evidently saw that my visit had weighed a little
on my spirits, and was determined to give to our short farewell as happy
and hopeful a character as possible. We now thoroughly understood each
other; and that was some consolation on leaving her.

Immediately on my return to London I repaired to North Villa.

Nothing, I was told, had happened in my absence, but I remarked some
change in Margaret. She looked pale and nervous, and was more silent
than I had ever known her to be before, when we met. She accounted
for this, in answer to my inquiries, by saying that confinement to the
house, in consequence of the raw, wintry weather, had a little affected
her; and then changed the subject. In other directions, household
aspects had not deviated from their accustomed monotony. As usual, Mrs.
Sherwin was at her post in the drawing-room; and her husband was reading
the evening paper, over his renowned old port, in the dining-room. After
the first five minutes of my arrival, I adapted myself again to my old
way of life at Mr. Sherwin's, as easily as if I had never interrupted
it for a single day. Henceforth, wherever my young wife was, there, and
there only, would it be home for _me!_

Late in the evening, Mr. Mannion arrived with some business letters for
Mr. Sherwin's inspection. I sent for him into the hall to see me, as I
was going away. His hand was never a warm one; but as I now took it, on
greeting him, it was so deadly cold that it literally chilled mine for
the moment. He only congratulated me, in the usual terms, on my safe
return; and said that nothing had taken place in my absence--but in his
utterance of those few words, I discovered, for the first time, a change
in his voice: his tones were lower, and his articulation quicker than
usual. This, joined to the extraordinary coldness of his hand, made
me inquire whether he was unwell. Yes, he too had been ill while I was
away--harassed with hard work, he said. Then apologising for leaving me
abruptly, on account of the letters he had brought with him, he returned
to Mr. Sherwin, in the dining-room, with a greater appearance of hurry
in his manner than I had ever remarked in it on any former occasion.

I had left Margaret and Mr. Mannion both well--I returned, and found
them both ill. Surely this was something that had taken place in my
absence, though they all said that nothing had happened. But trifling
illnesses seemed to be little regarded at North Villa--perhaps, because
serious illness was perpetually present there, in the person of Mrs.
Sherwin.

VI.

About six weeks after I had left the Hall, my father and Clara returned
to London for the season.

It is not my intention to delay over my life either at home or at North
Villa, during the spring and summer. This would be merely to repeat much
of what has been already related. It is better to proceed at once to the
closing period of my probation; to a period which it taxes my resolution
severely to write of at all. A few weeks more of toil at my narrative,
and the penance of this poor task-work will be over.

                       * * * * * *

Imagine then, that the final day of my long year of expectation has
arrived; and that on the morrow, Margaret, for whose sake I have
sacrificed and suffered so much, is at last really to be mine.

On the eve of the great change in my life that was now to take place,
the relative positions in which I, and the different persons with whom I
was associated, stood towards each other, may be sketched thus:--

My father's coldness of manner had not altered since his return to
London. On my side, I carefully abstained from uttering a word before
him, which bore the smallest reference to my real situation. Although
when we met, we outwardly preserved the usual relations of parent and
child, the estrangement between us had now become complete.

Clara did not fail to perceive this, and grieved over it in secret.
Other and happier feelings, however, became awakened within her, when I
privately hinted that the time for disclosing my secret to my sister was
not far off. She grew almost as much agitated as I was, though by
very different expectations--she could think of nothing else but the
explanation and the surprise in store for her. Sometimes, I almost
feared to keep her any longer in suspense; and half regretted having
said anything on the subject of the new and absorbing interest of my
life, before the period when I could easily have said all.

Mr. Sherwin and I had not latterly met on the most cordial terms. He was
dissatisfied with me for not having boldly approached the subject of my
marriage in my father's presence; and considered my reasons for still
keeping it secret, as dictated by morbid apprehension, and as showing a
total want of proper firmness. On the other hand, he was obliged to set
against this omission on my part, the readiness I had shown in meeting
his wishes on all remaining points. My life was insured in Margaret's
favour; and I had arranged to be called to the bar immediately, so as
to qualify myself in good time for every possible place within
place-hunting range. My assiduity in making these preparations for
securing Margaret's prospects and mine against any evil chances that
might happen, failed in producing the favourable effect on Mr. Sherwin,
which they must assuredly have produced on a less selfish man. But they
obliged him, at least, to stop short at occasional grumblings about
my reserve with my father, and to maintain towards me a sort of
sulky politeness, which was, after all, less offensive than the usual
infliction of his cordiality, with its unfailing accompaniment of dull
stories and duller jokes.

During the spring and summer, Mrs. Sherwin appeared to grow feebler
and feebler, from continued ill-health. Occasionally, her words and
actions--especially in her intercourse with me--suggested fears that her
mind was beginning to give way, as well as her body. For instance, on
one occasion, when Margaret had left the room for a minute or two,
she suddenly hurried up to me, whispering with eager looks and anxious
tones:--"Watch over your wife--mind you watch over her, and keep all bad
people from her! _I've_ tried to do it--mind _you_ do it, too!" I asked
immediately for an explanation of this extraordinary injunction; but
she only answered by muttering something about a mother's anxieties, and
then returned hastily to her place. It was impossible to induce her to
be more explicit, try how I might.

Margaret once or twice occasioned me much perplexity and distress, by
certain inconsistencies and variations in her manner, which began to
appear shortly after my return to North Villa from the country. At one
time, she would become, on a sudden, strangely sullen and silent--at
another, irritable and capricious. Then, again, she would abruptly
change to the most affectionate warmth of speech and demeanour,
anxiously anticipating every wish I could form, eagerly showing her
gratitude for the slightest attentions I paid her. These unaccountable
alterations of manner vexed and irritated me indescribably. I
loved Margaret too well to be able to look philosophically on the
imperfections of her character; I knew of no cause given by me for
the frequent changes in her conduct, and, if they only proceeded
from coquetry, then coquetry, as I once told her, was the last female
accomplishment that could charm me in any woman whom I really loved.
However, these causes of annoyance and regret--her caprices, and my
remonstrances--all passed happily away, as the term of my engagement
with Mr. Sherwin approached its end, Margaret's better and lovelier
manner returned. Occasionally, she might betray some symptoms of
confusion, some evidences of unusual thoughtfulness--but I remembered
how near was the day of the emancipation of our love, and looked on
her embarrassment as a fresh charm, a new ornament to the beauty of my
maiden wife.

Mr. Mannion continued--as far as attention to my interests went--to be
the same ready and reliable friend as ever; but he was, in some other
respects, an altered man. The illness of which he had complained months
back, when I returned to London, seemed to have increased. His face was
still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully impressed
me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet and
self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when he
joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop
before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something,
in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and
giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something in
their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything else
connected with him: they produced no external signs of distortion,
no unusual paleness in his face--you could not guess what pain he was
suffering, or where he was suffering it. Latterly, I abstained from ever
asking him to join us; for the effect on Margaret of his sudden attacks
of illness was, naturally, such as to discompose her seriously for the
remainder of the evening. Whenever I saw him accidentally, at later
periods of the year, the influence of the genial summer season appeared
to produce no alteration for the better in him. I remarked that his cold
hand, which had chilled me when I took it on the raw winter night of my
return from the country, was as cold as ever, on the warm summer days
which preceded the close of my engagement at North Villa.

Such was the posture of affairs at home, and at Mr. Sherwin's, when I
went to see Margaret for the last time in my old character, on the last
night which yet remained to separate us from each other.

I had been all day preparing for our reception, on the morrow, in a
cottage which I had taken for a month, in a retired part of the country,
at some distance from London. One month's unalloyed happiness with
Margaret, away from the world and all worldly considerations, was the
Eden upon earth towards which my dearest hope and anticipations had
pointed for a whole year past--and now, now at last, those aspirations
were to be realized! All my arrangements at the cottage were completed
in time to allow me to return home, just before our usual late dinner
hour. During the meal, I provided for my month's absence from London, by
informing my father that I proposed visiting one of my country friends.
He heard me as coldly and indifferently as usual; and, as I anticipated,
did not even ask to what friend's house I was going. After dinner, I
privately informed Clara that on the morrow, before starting, I
would, in accordance with my promise, make her the depositary of my
long-treasured secret--which, as yet, was not to be divulged to any one
besides. This done, I hurried away, between nine and ten o'clock, for
a last half-hour's visit to North Villa; hardly able to realise my own
situation, or to comprehend the fulness and exaltation of my own joy.

A disappointment was in store for me. Margaret was not in the house; she
had gone out to an evening party, given by a maiden aunt of hers, who
was known to be very rich, and was, accordingly, a person to be courted
and humoured by the family.

I was angry as well as disappointed at what had taken place. To
send Margaret out, on this evening of all others, showed a want of
consideration towards both of us, which revolted me. Mr. and Mrs.
Sherwin were in the room when I entered; and to _him_ I spoke my opinion
on the subject, in no very conciliatory terms. He was suffering from a
bad attack of headache, and a worse attack of ill-temper, and answered
as irritably as he dared.

"My good Sir!" he said, in sharp, querulous tones, "do, for once, allow
me to know what's best. You'll have it all _your_ way to-morrow--just
let me have _mine,_ for the last time, to-night. I'm sure you've been
humoured often enough about keeping Margaret away from parties--and we
should have humoured you this time, too; but a second letter came from
the old lady, saying she should be affronted if Margaret wasn't one of
her guests. I couldn't go and talk her over, because of this infernal
headache of mine--Hang it! it's your interest that Margaret should keep
in with her aunt; she'll have all the old girl's money, if she only
plays her cards decently well. That's why I sent her to the party--her
going will be worth some thousands to both of you one of these days.
She'll be back by half-past twelve, or before. Mannion was asked; and
though he's all out of sorts, he's gone to take care of her, and bring
her back. I'll warrant she comes home in good time, when _he's_ with
her. So you see there's nothing to make a fuss about, after all."

It was certainly a relief to hear that Mr. Mannion was taking care of
Margaret. He was, in my opinion, much fitter for such a trust than her
own father. Of all the good services he had done for me, I thought this
the best--but it would have been even better still, if he had prevented
Margaret from going to the party.

"I must say again," resumed Mr. Sherwin, still more irritably, finding
I did not at once answer him, "there's nothing that any reasonable
being need make a fuss about. I've been doing everything for Margaret's
interests and yours--and she'll be back by twelve--and Mr. Mannion takes
care of her--and I don't know what you would have--and it's devilish
hard, so ill as I am too, to cut up rough with me like this--devilish
hard!"

"I am sorry for your illness, Mr. Sherwin; and I don't doubt your good
intentions, or the advantage of Mr. Mannion's protection for Margaret;
but I feel disappointed, nevertheless, that she should have gone out
to-night."

"I said she oughtn't to go at all, whatever her aunt wrote--_I_ said
that."

This bold speech actually proceeded from Mrs. Sherwin! I had never
before heard her utter an opinion in her husband's presence--such an
outburst from _her,_ was perfectly inexplicable. She pronounced the
words with desperate rapidity, and unwonted power of tone, fixing her
eyes all the while on me with a very strange expression.

"Damn it, Mrs. S.!" roared her husband in a fury, "will you hold your
tongue? What the devil do you mean by giving _your_ opinion, when nobody
wants it? Upon my soul I begin to think you're getting a little cracked.
You've been meddling and bothering lately, so that I don't know what
the deuce has come to you! I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Basil," he
continued, turning snappishly round upon me, "you had better stop that
fidgetty temper of yours, by going to the party yourself. The old lady
told me she wanted gentlemen; and would be glad to see any friends of
mine I liked to send her. You have only to mention my name: Mannion will
do the civil in the way of introduction. There! there's an envelope
with the address to it--they won't know who you are, or what you are, at
Margaret's aunt's--you've got your black dress things on, all right
and ready--for Heaven's sake, go to the party yourself, and then I hope
you'll be satisfied!"

Here he stopped; and vented the rest of his ill-humour by ringing the
bell violently for "his arrow-root," and abusing the servant when she
brought it.

I hesitated about accepting his proposal. While I was in doubt, Mrs.
Sherwin took the opportunity, when her husband's eye was off her, of
nodding her head at me significantly. She evidently wished me to join
Margaret at the party--but why? What did her behaviour mean?

It was useless to inquire. Long bodily suffering and weakness had but
too palpably produced a corresponding feebleness in her intellect. What
should I do? I was resolved to see Margaret that night; but to wait for
her between two and three hours, in company with her father and mother
at North Villa, was an infliction not to be endured. I determined to go
to the party. No one there would know anything about me. They would be
all people who lived in a different world from mine; and whose manners
and habits I might find some amusement in studying. At any rate, I
should spend an hour or two with Margaret, and could make it my own
charge to see her safely home. Without further hesitation, therefore
I took up the envelope with the address on it, and bade Mr. and Mrs.
Sherwin good-night.

It struck ten as I left North Villa. The moonlight which was just
beginning to shine brilliantly on my arrival there, now appeared but at
rare intervals; for the clouds were spreading thicker and thicker over
the whole surface of the sky, as the night advanced.

VII.

The address to which I was now proceeding, led me some distance away
from Mr. Sherwin's place of abode, in the direction of the populous
neighbourhood which lies on the western side of the Edgeware Road. The
house of Margaret's aunt was plainly enough indicated to me, as soon
as I entered the street where it stood, by the glare of light from the
windows, the sound of dance music, and the nondescript group of cabmen
and linkmen, with their little train of idlers in attendance, assembled
outside the door. It was evidently a very large party. I hesitated about
going in.

My sensations were not those which fit a man for exchanging conventional
civilities with perfect strangers; I felt that I showed outwardly the
fever of joy and expectation within me. Could I preserve my assumed
character of a mere friend of the family, in Margaret's presence?--and
on this night too, of all others? It was far more probable that my
behaviour, if I went to the party, would betray everything to everybody
assembled. I determined to walk about in the neighbourhood of the house,
until twelve o'clock; and then to go into the hall, and send up my card
to Mr. Mannion, with a message on it, intimating that I was waiting
below to accompany him to North Villa with Margaret.

I crossed the street, and looked up again at the house from the pavement
opposite. Then lingered a little, listening to the music as it reached
me through the windows, and imagining to myself Margaret's occupation
at that moment. After this, I turned away; and set forth eastward on my
walk, careless in which direction I traced my steps.

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than
two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again. Until then,
the present had no existence for me--I lived in the past and future.
I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded
thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great
city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither
saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of
London. All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own
thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved
through my bridal dream. Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed to
the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow. Where
were the beings in the world? All merged in one--Margaret.

Sometimes, my thoughts glided back, dreamily and voluptuously, to the
day when I first met her. Sometimes, I recalled the summer evenings when
we sat and read together out of the same book; and, once more, it was as
if I breathed with the breath, and hoped with the hopes, and longed with
the old longings of those days. But oftenest it was with the morrow that
my mind was occupied. The first dream of all young men--the dream of
living rapturously with the woman they love, in a secret retirement kept
sacred from friends and from strangers alike, was now my dream; to be
realised in a few hours, to be realised with my waking on the morning
which was already at hand!

For the last quarter of an hour of my walk, I must have been
unconsciously retracing my steps towards the house of Margaret's aunt. I
came in sight of it again, just as the sound of the neighbouring church
clocks, striking eleven, roused me from my abstraction. More cabs were
in the street; more people were gathered about the door, by this time.
Was all this bustle, the bustle of arrival or of departure? Was the
party about to break up, at an hour when parties usually begin? I
determined to go nearer to the house, and ascertain whether the music
had ceased, or not.

I had approached close enough to hear the notes of the harp and
pianoforte still sounding as gaily as ever, when the house-door was
suddenly flung open for the departure of a lady and gentleman. The light
from the hall-lamps fell on their faces; and showed me Margaret and Mr.
Mannion.

Going home already! An hour and a half before it was time to return!
Why?

There could be but one reason. Margaret was thinking of me, and of what
I should feel if I called at North Villa, and had to wait for her till
past midnight. I ran forward to speak to them, as they descended the
steps; but exactly at the same moment, my voice was overpowered, and my
further progress barred, by a scuffle on the pavement among the people
who stood between us. One man said that his pocket had been picked;
others roared to him that they had caught the thief. There was a
fight--the police came up--I was surrounded on all sides by a shouting,
struggling mob that seemed to have gathered in an instant.

Before I could force myself out of the crowd, and escape into the road,
Margaret and Mr. Mannion had hurried into a cab. I just saw the vehicle
driving off rapidly, as I got free. An empty cab was standing near me--I
jumped into it directly--and told the man to overtake them. After having
waited my time so patiently, to let a mere accident stop me from going
home with them, as I had resolved, was not to be thought of for a
moment. I was hot and angry, after my contest with the crowd; and could
have flogged on the miserable cab-horse with my own hand, rather than
have failed in my purpose.

We were just getting closer behind them: I had just put my head out of
the window to call to them, and to bid the man who was driving me, call,
too--when their cab abruptly turned down a bye-street, in a direction
exactly opposite to the direction which led to North Villa.

What did this mean? Why were they not going straight home?

The cabman asked me whether he should not hail them before they got
farther away from us; frankly confessing, as he put the question,
that his horse was nothing like equal to the pace of the horse ahead.
Mechanically, without assignable purpose or motive, I declined his
offer, and told him simply to follow at any distance he could. While the
words passed my lips, a strange sensation stole over me: I seemed to be
speaking as the mere mouthpiece of some other voice. From feeling hot,
and moving about restlessly the moment before, I felt unaccountably
cold, and sat still now. What caused this?

My cab stopped. I looked out, and saw that the horse had fallen. "We've
lots of time, Sir," said the driver, as he coolly stepped off the box,
"they are just pulling up further down the road." I gave him some money,
and got out immediately--determined to overtake them on foot.

It was a very lonely place--a colony of half-finished streets, and
half-inhabited houses, which had grown up in the neighbourhood of a
great railway station. I heard the fierce scream of the whistle, and
the heaving, heavy throb of the engine starting on its journey, as I
advanced along the gloomy Square in which I now found myself. The cab
I had been following stood at a turning which led into a long street,
occupied towards the farther end, by shops closed for the night, and at
the end nearest me, apparently by private houses only. Margaret and Mr.
Mannion hastily left the cab, and without looking either to the right
or the left, hurried down the street. They stopped at the ninth house. I
followed just in time to hear the door closed on them, and to count the
number of doors intervening between that door and the Square.

The awful thrill of a suspicion which I hardly knew yet for what it
really was, began to creep over me--to creep like a dead-cold touch
crawling through and through me to the heart. I looked up at the house.
It was an hotel--a neglected, deserted, dreary-looking building.
Still acting mechanically; still with no definite impulse that I could
recognise, even if I felt it, except the instinctive resolution to
follow them into the house, as I had already followed them through the
street--I walked up to the door, and rang the bell.

It was answered by a waiter--a mere lad. As the light in the passage
fell on my face, he paused in the act of addressing me, and drew back
a few steps. Without stopping for any explanations, I closed the door
behind me, and said to him at once:

"A lady and gentleman came into this hotel a little while ago."

"What may your business be?"--He hesitated, and added in an altered
tone, "I mean, what may you want with them, Sir?"

"I want you to take me where I can hear their voices, and I want nothing
more. Here's a sovereign for you, if you do what I ask."

His eyes fastened covetously on the gold, as I held it before them. He
retired a few steps on tiptoe, and listened at the end of the passage.
I heard nothing but the thick, rapid beating of my own heart. He came
back, muttering to himself: "Master's safe at supper down stairs--I'll
risk it! You'll promise to go away directly," he added, whispering to
me, "and not disturb the house? We are quiet people here, and can't have
anything like a disturbance. Just say at once, will you promise to step
soft, and not speak a word?"

"I promise."

"This way then, Sir--and mind you don't forget to step soft."

A strange coldness and stillness, an icy insensibility, a
dream-sensation of being impelled by some hidden, irresistible agency,
possessed me, as I followed him upstairs. He showed me softly into an
empty room; pointed to one of the walls, whispering, "It's only boards
papered over--" and then waited, keeping his eyes anxiously and steadily
fixed upon all my movements.

I listened; and through the thin partition, I heard voices--_her_ voice,
and _his_ voice. _I heard and I knew_--knew my degradation in all its
infamy, knew my wrongs in all their nameless horror. He was exulting
in the patience and secrecy which had brought success to the foul plot,
foully hidden for months on months; foully hidden until the very day
before I was to have claimed as my wife, a wretch as guilty as himself!

I could neither move nor breathe. The blood surged and heaved upward to
my brain; my heart strained and writhed in anguish; the life within me
raged and tore to get free. Whole years of the direst mental and bodily
agony were concentrated in that one moment of helpless, motionless
torment. I never lost the consciousness of suffering. I heard the
waiter say, under his breath, "My God! he's dying." I felt him loosen my
cravat--I knew that he dashed cold water over me; dragged me out of the
room; and, opening a window on the landing, held me firmly where the
night-air blew upon my face. I knew all this; and knew when the paroxysm
passed, and nothing remained of it, but a shivering helplessness in
every limb.

Erelong, the power of thinking began to return to me by degrees.

Misery, and shame, and horror, and a vain yearning to hide myself from
all human eyes, and weep out my life in secret, overcame me. Then, these
subsided; and ONE THOUGHT slowly arose in their stead--arose, and
cast down before it every obstacle of conscience, every principle of
education, every care for the future, every remembrance of the past,
every weakening influence of present misery, every repressing tie of
family and home, every anxiety for good fame in this life, and every
idea of the next that was to come. Before the fell poison of that
Thought, all other thoughts--good or evil--died. As it spoke secretly
within me, I felt my bodily strength coming back; a quick vigour leapt
hotly through my frame. I turned, and looked round towards the room we
had just left--my mind was looking at the room beyond it, the room they
were in.

The waiter was still standing by my side, watching me intently. He
suddenly started back; and, with pale face and staring eyes, pointed
down the stairs.

"You go," he whispered, "go directly! You're well now--I'm afraid to
have you here any longer. I saw your look, your horrid look at that
room! You've heard what you wanted for your money--go at once; or, if
I lose my place for it, I'll call out Murder, and raise the house. And
mind this: as true as God's in heaven, I'll warn them both before they
go outside our door!"

Hearing, but not heeding him, I left the house. No voice that ever
spoke, could have called me back from the course on which I was now
bound. The waiter watched me vigilantly from the door, as I went out.
Seeing this, I made a circuit, before I returned to the spot where, as I
had suspected, the cab they had ridden in was still waiting for them.

The driver was asleep inside. I awoke him; told him I had been sent
to say that he was not wanted again that night: and secured his ready
departure, by at once paying him on his own terms. He drove off; and
the first obstacle on the fatal path which I had resolved to tread
unopposed, was now removed.

As the cab disappeared from my sight, I looked up at the sky. It was
growing very dark. The ragged black clouds, fantastically parted from
each other in island shapes over the whole surface of the heavens, were
fast drawing together into one huge, formless, lowering mass, and
had already hidden the moon for, good. I went back to the street, and
stationed myself in the pitch darkness of a passage which led down a
mews, situated exactly opposite to the hotel.

In the silence and obscurity, in the sudden pause of action while I
now waited and watched, my Thought rose to my lips, and my speech
mechanically formed it into words. I whispered softly to myself: _I will
kill him when he comes out._ My mind never swerved for an instant from
this thought--never swerved towards myself; never swerved towards _her._
Grief was numbed at my heart; and the consciousness of my own misery was
numbed with grief. Death chills all before it--and Death and my Thought
were one.

Once, while I stood on the watch, a sharp agony of suspense tried me
fiercely.

Just as I had calculated that the time was come which would force them
to depart, in order to return to North Villa by the appointed hour, I
heard the slow, heavy, regular tramp of a footstep advancing along the
street. It was the policeman of the district going his round. As he
approached the entrance to the mews he paused, yawned, stretched his
arms, and began to whistle a tune. If Mannion should come out while he
was there! My blood seemed to stagnate on its course, while I thought
that this might well happen. Suddenly, the man ceased whistling, looked
steadily up and down the street, and tried the door of a house near
him--advanced a few steps--then paused again, and tried another
door--then muttered to himself, in drowsy tones--"I've seen all safe
here already: it's the other street I forgot just now." He turned, and
retraced his way. I fixed my aching eyes vigilantly on the hotel, while
I heard the sound of his footsteps grow fainter and fainter in the
distance. It ceased altogether; and still there was no change--still the
man whose life I was waiting for, never appeared.

Ten minutes after this, so far as I can guess, the door opened; and I
heard Mannion's voice, and the voice of the lad who had let me in. "Look
about you before you go out," said the waiter, speaking in the
passage; "the street's not safe for you." Disbelieving, or affecting to
disbelieve, what he heard, Mannion interrupted the waiter angrily; and
endeavoured to reassure his companion in guilt, by asserting that the
warning was nothing but an attempt to extort money by way of reward. The
man retorted sulkily, that he cared nothing for the gentleman's money,
or the gentleman either. Immediately afterwards an inner door in the
house banged violently; and I knew that Mannion had been left to his
fate.

There was a momentary silence; and then I heard him tell his accomplice
that he would go alone to look for the cab, and that she had better
close the door and wait quietly in the passage till he came back. This
was done. He walked out into the street. It was after twelve o'clock. No
sound of a strange footfall was audible--no soul was at hand to witness,
and prevent, the coming struggle. His life was mine. His death followed
him as fast as my feet followed, while I was now walking on his track.

He looked up and down, from the entrance to the street, for the cab.
Then, seeing that it was gone, he hastily turned back. At that instant I
met him face to face. Before a word could be spoken, even before a look
could be exchanged, my hands were on his throat.

He was a taller and heavier man than I was; and struggled with me,
knowing that he was struggling for his life. He never shook my grasp on
him for a moment; but he dragged me out into the road--dragged me away
eight or ten yards from the street. The heavy gasps of approaching
suffocation beat thick on my forehead from his open mouth: he swerved
to and fro furiously, from side to side; and struck at me, swinging his
clenched fists high above his head. I stood firm, and held him away at
arm's length. As I dug my feet into the ground to steady myself, I heard
the crunching of stones--the road had been newly mended with granite.
Instantly, a savage purpose goaded into fury the deadly resolution by
which I was possessed. I shifted my hold to the back of his neck, and
the collar of his coat, and hurled him, with the whole impetus of the
raging strength that was let loose in me, face downwards, on to the
stones.

In the mad triumph of that moment, I had already stooped towards him, as
he lay insensible beneath me, to lift him again, and beat out of him, on
the granite, not life only, but the semblance of humanity as well; when,
in the blank stillness that followed the struggle, I heard the door of
the hotel in the street open once more. I left him directly, and ran
back from the square--I knew not with what motive, or what idea--to the
spot.

On the steps of the house, on the threshold of that accursed place,
stood the woman whom God's minister had given to me in the sight of God,
as my wife.

One long pang of shame and despair shot through my heart as I looked at
her, and tortured out of its trance the spirit within me. Thousands on
thousands of thoughts seemed to be whirling in the wildest confusion
through and through my brain--thoughts, whose track was a track of
fire--thoughts that struck me with a hellish torment of dumbness, at
the very time when I would have purchased with my life the power of a
moment's speech. Voiceless and tearless, I went up to her, and took
her by the arm, and drew her away from the house. There was some vague
purpose in me, as I did this, of never quitting my hold of her, never
letting her stir from me by so much as an inch, until I had spoken
certain words to her. What words they were, and when I should utter
them, I could not tell.

The cry for mercy was on her lips, but the instant our eyes met, it died
away in long, low, hysterical moanings. Her cheeks were ghastly, her
features were rigid, her eyes glared like an idiot's; guilt and terror
had made her hideous to look upon already.

I drew her onward a few paces towards the Square. Then I stopped,
remembering the body that lay face downwards on the road. The savage
strength of a few moments before, had left me from the time when I first
saw her. I now reeled where I stood, from sheer physical weakness.
The sound of her pantings and shudderings, of her abject inarticulate
murmurings for mercy, struck me with a supernatural terror. My fingers
trembled round her arm, the perspiration dripped down my face, like
rain; I caught at the railings by my side, to keep myself from falling.
As I did so, she snatched her arm from my grasp, as easily as if I had
been a child; and, with a cry for help, fled towards the further end of
the street.

Still, the strange instinct of never losing hold of her, influenced me.
I followed, staggering like a drunken man. In a moment, she was out of
my reach; in another, out of my sight. I went on, nevertheless; on, and
on, and on, I knew not whither. I lost all ideas of time and distance.
Sometimes I went round and round the same streets, over and over again.
Sometimes I hurried in one direction, straight forward. Wherever I went,
it seemed to me that she was still just before; that her track and my
track were one; that I had just lost my hold of her, and that she was
just starting on her flight.

I remember passing two men in this way, in some great thoroughfare. They
both stopped, turned, and walked a few steps after me. One laughed at
me, as a drunkard. The other, in serious tones, told him to be silent;
for I was not drunk, but mad--he had seen my face as I passed under a
gas-lamp, and he knew that I was mad.

"MAD!"--that word, as I heard it, rang after me like a voice of
judgment. "MAD!"--a fear had come over me, which, in all its frightful
complication, was expressed by that one word--a fear which, to the man
who suffers it, is worse even than the fear of death; which no human
language ever has conveyed, or ever will convey, in all its horrible
reality, to others. I had pressed onward, hitherto, because I saw a
vision that led me after it--a beckoning shadow, ahead, darker even
than the night darkness. I still pressed on, now; but only because I was
afraid to stop.

I know not how far I had gone, when my strength utterly failed me, and
I sank down helpless, in a lonely place where the houses were few and
scattered, and trees and fields were dimly discernible in the obscurity
beyond. I hid my face in my hands, and tried to assure myself that I was
still in possession of my senses. I strove hard to separate my thoughts;
to distinguish between my recollections; to extricate from the confusion
within me any one idea, no matter what--and I could not do it. In that
awful struggle for the mastery over my own mind, all that had passed,
all the horror of that horrible night, became as nothing to me. I
raised myself, and looked up again, and tried to steady my reason by
the simplest means--even by endeavouring to count all the houses within
sight. The darkness bewildered me. Darkness?--_Was_ it dark? or was day
breaking yonder, far away in the murky eastern sky? Did I know what I
saw? Did I see the same thing for a few moments together? What was this
under me? Grass? yes! cold, soft, dewy grass. I bent down my forehead
upon it, and tried, for the last time, to steady my faculties by
praying; tried if I could utter the prayer which I had known and
repeated every day from childhood--the Lord's Prayer. The Divine Words
came not at my call--no! not one of them, from the beginning to the end!
I started up on my knees. A blaze of lurid sunshine flashed before my
eyes; a hell-blaze of brightness, with fiends by millions, raining
down out of it on my head; then a rayless darkness--the darkness of the
blind--then God's mercy at last--the mercy of utter oblivion.

When I recovered my consciousness, I was lying on the couch in my own
study. My father was supporting me on the pillow; the doctor had his
fingers on my pulse; and a policeman was telling them where he had found
me, and how he had brought me home.

PART III.

I.

WHEN the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, the same
succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world, immediately
shuts out the bright prospect again, for a time. A bandage is passed
over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of the recovered sense, it
should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from darkness to
light. But between the awful blank of total privation of vision, and
the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies the widest
difference. In the moment of their restoration, the blind have had
one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of
brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish. The
new darkness is not like the void darkness of old; it is filled with
changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying forms, rising,
falling, whirling hither and thither with every second. Even when
the handkerchief is passed over them, the once sightless eyes, though
bandaged fast, are yet not blinded as they were before.

It was so with my mental vision. After the utter oblivion and darkness
of a deep swoon, consciousness flashed like light on my mind, when I
found myself in my father's presence, and in my own home. But, almost
at the very moment when I first awakened to the bewildering influence
of that sight, a new darkness fell upon my faculties--a darkness, this
time, which was not utter oblivion; a peopled darkness, like that which
the bandage casts over the opened eyes of the blind.

I had sensations, I had thoughts, I had visions, now--but they all acted
in the frightful self-concentration of delirium. The lapse of time, the
march of events, the alternation of day and night, the persons who moved
about me, the words they spoke, the offices of kindness they did for
me--all these were annihilated from the period when I closed my eyes
again, after having opened them for an instant on my father, in my own
study.

My first sensation (how soon it came after I had been brought home, I
know not) was of a terrible heat; a steady, blazing heat, which seemed
to have shrivelled and burnt up the whole of the little world around me,
and to have left me alone to suffer, but never to consume in it. After
this, came a quick, restless, unintermittent toiling of obscure thought,
ever in the same darkened sphere, ever on the same impenetrable subject,
ever failing to reach some distant and visionary result. It was as if
something were imprisoned in my mind, and moving always to and fro in
it--moving, but never getting free.

Soon, these thoughts began to take a form that I could recognise.

In the clinging heat and fierce seething fever, to which neither waking
nor sleeping brought a breath of freshness or a dream of change, I
began to act my part over again, in the events that had passed, but in
a strangely altered character. Now, instead of placing implicit trust in
others, as I had done; instead of failing to discover a significance and
a warning in each circumstance as it arose, I was suspicious from the
first--suspicious of Margaret, of her father, of her mother, of Mannion,
of the very servants in the house. In the hideous phantasmagoria of
my own calamity on which I now looked, my position was reversed. Every
event of the doomed year of my probation was revived. But the doom
itself, the night-scene of horror through which I had passed, had
utterly vanished from my memory. This lost recollection, it was the one
unending toil of my wandering mind to recover, and I never got it back.
None who have not suffered as I suffered then, can imagine with what a
burning rage of determination I followed past events in my delirium, one
by one, for days and nights together,--followed, to get to the end which
I knew was beyond, but which I never could see, not even by glimpses,
for a moment at a time.

However my visions might alter in their course of succession, they
always began with the night when Mannion returned from the continent
to North Villa. I stood again in the drawing-room; I saw him enter; I
marked the slight confusion of Margaret; and instantly doubted her.
I noticed his unwillingness to meet her eye or mine; I looked on the
sinister stillness of his face; and suspected him. From that moment,
love vanished, and hatred came in its place. I began to watch; to garner
up slight circumstances which confirmed my suspicions; to wait craftily
for the day when I should discover, judge, and punish them both--the day
of disclosure and retribution that never came.

Sometimes, I was again with Mannion, in his house, on the night of the
storm. I detected in every word he spoke an artful lure to trap me into
trusting him as my second father, more than as my friend. I heard in
the tempest sounds which mysteriously interrupted, or mingled with, my
answers, voices supernaturally warning me of my enemy, each time that I
spoke to him. I saw once more the hideous smile of triumph on his face,
as I took leave of him on the doorstep: and saw it, this time, not as
an illusion produced by a flash of lightning, but as a frightful reality
which the lightning disclosed.

Sometimes, I was again in the garden at North Villa accidentally
overhearing the conversation between Margaret and her
mother--overhearing what deceit she was willing to commit, for the sake
of getting a new dress--then going into the room, and seeing her assume
her usual manner on meeting me, as if no such words as I had listened to
but the moment before, had ever proceeded from her lips. Or, I saw her
on that other morning, when, to revenge the death of her bird, she would
have killed with her own hand the one pet companion that her sick
mother possessed. Now, no generous, trusting love blinded me to the
real meaning of such events as these. Now, instead of regarding them as
little weaknesses of beauty, and little errors of youth, I saw them as
timely warnings, which bade me remember when the day of my vengeance
came, that in the contriving of the iniquity on which they were both
bent, the woman had been as vile as the man.

Sometimes, I was once more on my way to North Villa, after my week's
absence at our country house. I saw again the change in Margaret since
I had left her--the paleness, the restlessness, the appearance of
agitation. I took the hand of Mannion, and started as I felt its deadly
coldness, and remarked the strange alteration in his manner. When they
accounted for these changes by telling me that both had been ill, in
different ways, since my departure, I detected the miserable lie at
once; I knew that an evil advantage had been taken of my absence; that
the plot against me was fast advancing towards consummation: and that,
at the sight of their victim, even the two wretches who were compassing
my dishonour could not repress all outward manifestation of their guilt.

Sometimes, the figure of Mrs. Sherwin appeared to me, wan and weary, and
mournful with a ghostly mournfulness. Again I watched her, and listened
to her; but now with eager curiosity, with breathless attention. Once
more, I saw her shudder when Mannion's cold eyes turned on her face--I
marked the anxious, imploring look that she cast on Margaret and on
me--I heard her confused, unwilling answer, when I inquired the cause
of her dislike of the man in whom her husband placed the most implicit
trust--I listened to her abrupt, inexplicable injunction to "watch
continually over my wife, and keep bad people from her." All these
different circumstances occurred again as vividly as in the reality;
but I did not now account for them, as I had once accounted for them, by
convincing myself that Mrs. Sherwin's mind was wandering, and that her
bodily sufferings had affected her intellect. I saw immediately, that
she suspected Mannion, and dared not openly confess her suspicions; I
saw, that in the stillness, and abandonment, and self-concentration of
her neglected life, she had been watching more vigilantly than others
had watched; I detected in every one of her despised gestures, and
looks, and halting words, the same concealed warning ever lying beneath
the surface; I knew they had not succeeded in deceiving her; I was
determined they should not succeed in deceiving me.

It was oftenest at this point, that my restless memory recoiled before
the impenetrable darkness which forbade it to see further--to see on
to the last evening, to the fatal night. It was oftenest at this point,
that I toiled and struggled back, over and over again, to seek once more
the lost events of the End, through the events of the Beginning. How
often my wandering thoughts thus incessantly and desperately traced and
retraced their way over their own fever track, I cannot tell: but there
came a time when they suddenly ceased to torment me; when the heavy
burden that was on my mind fell off; when a sudden strength and fury
possessed me, and I plunged down through a vast darkness into a world
whose daylight was all radiant flame. Giant phantoms mustered by
millions, flashing white as lightning in the ruddy air. They rushed on
me with hurricane speed; their wings fanned me with fiery breezes; and
the echo of their thunder-music was like the groaning and rending of an
earthquake, as they tore me away with them on their whirlwind course.

Away! to a City of Palaces, to measureless halls, and arches, and domes,
soaring one above another, till their flashing ruby summits are lost
in the burning void, high overhead. On! through and through these
mountain-piles, into countless, limitless corridors, reared on pillars
lurid and rosy as molten lava. Far down the corridors rise visions
of flying phantoms, ever at the same distance before us--their raving
voices clanging like the hammers of a thousand forges. Still on and
on; faster and faster, for days, years, centuries together, till there
comes, stealing slowly forward to meet us, a shadow--a vast, stealthy,
gliding shadow--the first darkness that has ever been shed over that
world of blazing light! It comes nearer--nearer and nearer softly, till
it touches the front ranks of our phantom troop. Then in an instant, our
rushing progress is checked: the thunder-music of our wild march stops;
the raving voices of the spectres ahead, cease; a horror of blank
stillness is all about us--and as the shadow creeps onward and onward,
until we are enveloped in it from front to rear, we shiver with icy cold
under the fiery air and amid the lurid lava pillars which hem us in on
either side.

A silence, like no silence ever known on earth; a darkening of the
shadow, blacker than the blackest night in the thickest wood--a
pause--then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then,
an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow--two monsters
stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving
on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light.
Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst of them, the phantom troop
dropped into formless masses, while the monsters advanced. They came
close to me; and I alone, of all the myriads around, changed not at
their approach. Each laid a talon on my shoulder--each raised a veil
which was one hideous net-work of twining worms. I saw through the
ghastly corruption of their faces the look that told me who they
were--the monstrous iniquities incarnate in monstrous forms; the
fiend-souls made visible in fiend-shapes--Margaret and Mannion!

A moment more! and I was alone with those two. Not a wreck of the
phantom-multitude remained; the towering city, the gleaming corridors,
the fire-bright radiance had vanished. We stood on a wilderness--a
still, black lake of dead waters was before us; a white, faint, misty
light shone on us. Outspread over the noisome ground lay the ruins of a
house, rooted up and overthrown to its foundations. The demon figures,
still watching on either side of me, drew me slowly forward to the
fallen stones, and pointed to two dead bodies lying among them.

My father!--my sister!--both cold and still, and whiter than the white
light that showed them to me. The demons at my side stretched out their
crooked talons, and forbade me to kneel before my father, or to kiss
Clara's wan face, before I went to torment. They struck me motionless
where I stood--and unveiled their hideous faces once more, jeering at me
in triumph. Anon, the lake of black waters heaved up and overflowed,
and noiselessly sucked us away into its central depths--depths that were
endless; depths of rayless darkness, in which we slowly eddied round
and round, deeper and deeper down at every turn. I felt the bodies of
my father and my sister touching me in cold contact: I stretched out my
arms to clasp them and sink with them; and the demon pair glided between
us, and separated me from them. This vain striving to join myself to my
dead kindred when we touched each other in the slow, endless whirlpool,
ever continued and was ever frustrated in the same way. Still we sank
apart, down the black gulphs of the lake; still there was no light,
no sound, no change, no pause of repose--and this was eternity: the
eternity of Hell!

Such was one dream-vision out of many that I saw. It must have been at
this time that men were set to watch me day and night (as I afterwards
heard), in order that I might be held down in my bed, when a paroxysm of
convulsive strength made me dangerous to myself and to all about me. The
period too when the doctors announced that the fever had seized on my
brain, and was getting the better of their skill, must have been _this_
period.

But though they gave up my life as lost, I was not to die. There came a
time, at last, when the gnawing fever lost its hold; and I awoke faintly
one morning to a new existence--to a life frail and helpless as the life
of a new-born babe.

I was too weak to move, to speak, to open my eyes, to exert in the
smallest degree any one faculty, bodily or mental, that I possessed. The
first sense of which I regained the use, was the sense of hearing;
and the first sound that I recognised, was of a light footstep which
mysteriously approached, paused, and then retired again gently outside
my door. The hearing of this sound was my first pleasure, the waiting
for its repetition my first source of happy expectation, since I had
been ill. Once more the footsteps approached--paused a moment--then
seemed to retire as before--then returned slowly. A sigh, very faint and
trembling; a whisper of which I could not yet distinguish the import,
caught my ear--and after that, there was silence. Still I waited (oh,
how happily and calmly!) to hear the whisper soon repeated, and to hear
it better when it next came. Ere long, for the third time, the footsteps
advanced, and the whispering accents sounded again. I could now hear
that they pronounced my name--once, twice, three times--very softly and
imploringly, as if to beg the answer which I was still too weak to give.
But I knew the voice: I knew it was Clara's. Long after it had ceased,
the whisper lingered gently on my ear, like a lullaby that alternately
soothed me to slumber, and welcomed me to wakefulness. It seemed to be
thrilling through my frame with a tender, reviving influence--the same
influence which the sunshine had, weeks afterwards, when I enjoyed it
for the first time out of doors.

The next sound that came to me was audible in my room; audible
sometimes, close at my pillow. It was the simplest sound
imaginable--nothing but the soft rustling of a woman's dress. And yet,
I heard in it innumerable harmonies, sweet changes, and pauses minute
beyond all definition. I could only open my eyes for a minute at a time,
and even then, could not fix them steadily on anything; but I knew that
the rustling dress was Clara's; and fresh sensations seemed to throng
upon me, as I listened to the sound which told me that she was in the
room. I felt the soft summer air on my face; I enjoyed the sweet scent
of flowers, wafted on that air; and once, when my door was left open for
a moment, the twittering of birds in the aviary down stairs, rang
with exquisite clearness and sweetness on my ear. It was thus that my
faculties strengthened, hour by hour, always in the same gradual way,
from the time when I first heard the footstep and the whisper outside my
chamber-door.

One evening I awoke from a cool, dreamless sleep; and, seeing Clara
sitting by my bedside, faintly uttered her name, and moved my wasted
hand to take hers. As I saw the calm, familiar face bending over me;
the anxious eyes looking tenderly and lovingly into mine--as the last
melancholy glory of sunset hovered on my bed, and the air, sinking
already into its twilight repose, came softly and more softly into
the room--as my sister took me in her arms, and raising me on my weary
pillow, bade me for her sake lie hushed and patient a little longer--the
memory of the ruin and the shame that had overwhelmed me; the memory of
my love that had become an infamy; and of my brief year's hope miserably
fulfilled by a life of despair, swelled darkly over my heart. The red,
retiring rays of sunset just lingered at that moment on my face. Clara
knelt down by my pillow, and held up her handkerchief to shade my
eyes--"God has given you back to us, Basil," she whispered, "to make us
happier than ever." As she spoke, the springs of the grief so long pent
up within me were loosened; hot tears dropped heavily and quickly from
my eyes; and I wept for the first time since the night of horror which
had stretched me where I now lay--wept in my sister's arms, at that
quiet evening hour, for the lost honour, the lost hope, the lost
happiness that had gone from me for ever in my youth!

II.

Darkly and wearily the days of my recovery went on. After that first
outburst of sorrow on the evening when I recognised my sister, and
murmured her name as she sat by my side, there sank over all my
faculties a dull, heavy trance of mental pain.

I dare not describe what remembrances of the guilty woman who had
deceived and ruined me, now gnawed unceasingly and poisonously at my
heart. My bodily strength feebly revived; but my mental energies
never showed a sign of recovering with them. My father's considerate
forbearance, Clara's sorrowful reserve in touching on the subject of my
long illness, or of the wild words which had escaped me in my delirium,
mutely and gently warned me that the time was come when I owed the tardy
atonement of confession to the family that I had disgraced; and still,
I had no courage to speak, no resolution to endure. The great misery
of the past, shut out from me the present and the future alike--every
active power of my mind seemed to be destroyed hopelessly and for ever.

There were moments--most often at the early morning hours, while
the heaviness of the night's sleep still hung over me in my
wakefulness--when I could hardly realise the calamity which had
overwhelmed me; when it seemed that I must have dreamt, during the
night, of scenes of crime and woe and heavy trial which had never
actually taken place. What was the secret of the terrible influence
which--let her even be the vilest of the vile--Mannion must have
possessed over Margaret Sherwin, to induce her to sacrifice me to him?
Even the crime itself was not more hideous and more incredible than the
mystery in which its evil motives, and the manner of its evil ripening,
were still impenetrably veiled.

Mannion! It was a strange result of the mental malady under which I
suffered, that, though the thought of Mannion was now inextricably
connected with every thought of Margaret, I never once asked myself, or
had an idea of asking myself, for days together, after my convalescence,
what had been the issue of our struggle, for him. In the despair of
first awakening to a perfect sense of the calamity which had been
hurled on me from the hand of my wife--in the misery of first clearly
connecting together, after the wanderings of delirium, the Margaret to
whom with my hand I had given all my heart, with the Margaret who had
trampled on the gift and ruined the giver--all minor thoughts and
minor feelings, all motives of revengeful curiosity or of personal
apprehension were suppressed. And yet, the time was soon to arrive when
that lost thought of inquiry into Mannion's fate, was to become the
one master-thought that possessed me--the thought that gave back its
vigilance to my intellect, and its manhood to my heart.

One evening I was sitting alone in my room. My father had taken Clara
out for a little air and exercise, and the servant had gone away at my
own desire. It was in this quiet and solitude, when the darkness was
fast approaching, when the view from my window was at its loneliest,
when my mind was growing listless and confused as the weary day
wore out--it was exactly at this time that the thought suddenly and
mysteriously flashed across me: Had Mannion been taken up from the
stones on which I had hurled him, a living man or a dead?

I instinctively started to my feet with something of the vigour of
my former health; repeating the question to myself; and feeling, as I
unconsciously murmured aloud the few words which expressed it, that my
life had purposes and duties, trials and achievements, which were yet to
be fulfilled. How could I instantly solve the momentous doubt which had
now, for the first time, crossed my mind?

One moment I paused in eager consideration--the next, I descended to the
library. A daily newspaper was kept there, filed for reference. I might
possibly decide the fatal question in a few moments by consulting it.
In my burning anxiety and impatience I could hardly handle the leaves or
see the letters, as I tried to turn back to the right date--the day (oh
anguish of remembrance!) on which I was to have claimed Margaret Sherwin
as my wife!

At last, I found the number I desired; but the closely-printed columns
swam before me as I looked at them. A glass of water stood on a table
near me--I dipped my handkerchief in it, and cooled my throbbing eyes.
The destiny of my future life might be decided by the discovery I was
now about to make!

I locked the door to guard against all intrusion, and then returned to
my task--returned to my momentous search--slowly tracing my way through
the paper, paragraph by paragraph, column by column.

On the last page, and close to the end, I read these lines:

                 "MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE.

"About one o'clock this morning, a gentleman was discovered lying on his
face in the middle of the road, in Westwood Square, by the policeman on
duty. The unfortunate man was to all appearance dead. He had fallen on
a part of the road which had been recently macadamised; and his face, we
are informed, is frightfully mutilated by contact with the granite.
The policeman conveyed him to the neighbouring hospital, where it was
discovered that he was still alive, and the promptest attentions were
immediately paid him. We understand that the surgeon in attendance
considers it absolutely impossible that he could have been injured as he
was, except by having been violently thrown down on his face, either
by a vehicle driven at a furious rate, or by a savage attack from some
person or persons unknown. In the latter case, robbery could not have
been the motive; for the unfortunate man's watch, purse, and ring were
all found about him. No cards of address or letters of any kind were
discovered in his pockets, and his linen and handkerchief were only
marked with the letter M. He was dressed in evening costume--entirely in
black. After what has been already said about the injuries to his
face, any recognisable personal description of him is, for the present,
unfortunately out of the question. We wait with much anxiety to gain
some further insight into this mysterious affair, when the sufferer is
restored to consciousness. The last particulars which our reporter was
able to collect at the hospital were, that the surgeon expected to save
his patient's life, and the sight of one of his eyes. The sight of the
other is understood to be entirely destroyed."

With sensations of horror which I could not then, and cannot now
analyse, I turned to the next day's paper; but found in it no further
reference to the object of my search. In the number for the day after,
however, the subject was resumed in these words:

"The mystery of the accident in Westwood Square thickens. The sufferer
is restored to consciousness; he is perfectly competent to hear and
understand what is said to him, and is able to articulate, but not very
plainly, and only for a moment or so, at a time. The authorities at the
hospital anticipated, as we did, that, on the patient's regaining his
senses, some information of the manner in which the terrible accident
from which he is suffering was caused, would be obtained from him. But,
to the astonishment of every one, he positively refuses to answer any
questions as to the circumstances under which his frightful injuries
were inflicted. With the same unaccountable secrecy, he declines to tell
his name, his place of abode, or the names of any friends to whom notice
of his situation might be communicated. It is quite in vain to press him
for any reason for this extraordinary course of conduct--he appears
to be a man of very unusual firmness of character; and his refusal to
explain himself in any way, is evidently no mere caprice of the moment.
All this leads to the conjecture that the injuries he has sustained were
inflicted on him from some motive of private vengeance; and that certain
persons are concerned in this disgraceful affair, whom he is unwilling
to expose to public odium, for some secret reason which it is impossible
to guess at. We understand that he bears the severe pain consequent
upon his situation, in such a manner as to astonish every person about
him--no agony draws from him a word or a sigh. He displayed no emotion
even when the surgeons informed him that the sight of one of his eyes
was hopelessly destroyed; and merely asked to be supplied with writing
materials as soon as he could see to use them, when he was told that the
sight of the other would be saved. He further added, we are informed,
that he was in a position to reward the hospital authorities for any
trouble he gave, by making a present to the funds of the charity, as
soon as he should be discharged as cured. His coolness in the midst of
sufferings which would deprive most other men of all power of thinking
or speaking, is as remarkable as his unflinching secrecy--a secrecy
which, for the present at least, we cannot hope to penetrate."

I closed the newspaper. Even then, a vague forewarning of what Mannion's
inexplicable reserve boded towards me, crossed my mind. There was yet
more difficulty, danger, and horror to be faced, than I had hitherto
confronted. The slough of degradation and misery into which I had
fallen, had its worst perils yet in store for me.

As I became impressed by this conviction, the enervating remembrance
of the wickedness to which I had been sacrificed, grew weaker in its
influence over me; the bitter tears that I had shed in secret for so
many days past, dried sternly at their sources; and I felt the power
to endure and to resist coming back to me with my sense of the coming
strife. On leaving the library, I ascended again to my own room. In a
basket, on my table, lay several unopened letters, which had arrived
for me during my illness. There were two which I at once suspected,
in hastily turning over the collection, might be all-important in
enlightening me on the vile subject of Mannion's female accomplice. The
addresses of both these letters were in Mr. Sherwin's handwriting. The
first that I opened was dated nearly a month back, and ran thus:

                             "North Villa, Hollyoake Square.

"DEAR SIR,

"With agonised feelings which no one but a parent, and I will add, an
affectionate parent, can possibly form an idea of, I address you on
the subject of the act of atrocity committed by that perjured villain,
Mannion. You will find that I and my innocent daughter have been, like
you, victims of the most devilish deceit that ever was practised on
respectable and unsuspecting people.

"Let me ask you, Sir, to imagine the state of my feelings on the night
of that most unfortunate party, when I saw my beloved Margaret, instead
of coming home quietly as usual, rush into the room in a state bordering
on distraction, with a tale the most horrible that ever was addressed
to a father's ears. The double-faced villain (I really can't mention his
name again) had, I blush to acknowledge, attempted to take advantage of
her innocence and confidence--all our innocences and confidences, I may
say--but my dear Margaret showed a virtuous courage beyond her years,
the natural result of the pious principles and the moral bringing up
which I have given her from her cradle. Need I say what was the upshot?
Virtue triumphed, as virtue always does, and the villain left her to
herself. It was when she was approaching the door-step to fly to
the bosom of her home that, I am given to understand, you, by a most
remarkable accident, met her. As a man of the world, you will easily
conceive what must have been the feelings of a young female, under such
peculiar and shocking circumstances. Besides this, your manner, as I am
informed, was so terrifying and extraordinary, and my poor Margaret felt
so strongly that deceitful appearances might be against her, that she
lost all heart, and fled at once, as I said before, to the bosom of her
home.

"She is still in a very nervous and unhappy state; she fears that
you may be too ready to believe appearances; but I know better. Her
explanation will be enough for you, as it was for me. We may have our
little differences on minor topics, but we have both the same manly
confidence, I am sure--you in your wife, and me in my daughter.

"I called at your worthy father's mansion, to have a fuller
explanation with you than I can give here, the morning after this
to-all-parties-most-distressing occurrence happened: and was then
informed of your serious illness, for which pray accept my best
condolences. The next thing I thought of doing was to write to your
respected father, requesting a private interview. But on maturer
consideration, I thought it perhaps slightly injudicious to take such a
step, while you, as the principal party concerned, were ill in bed, and
not able to come forward and back me. I was anxious, you will observe,
to act for your interests, as well as the interests of my darling
girl--of course, knowing at the same time that I had the marriage
certificate in my possession, if needed as a proof, and supposing I was
driven to extremities and obliged to take my own course in the matter.
But, as I said before, I have a fatherly and friendly confidence in your
feeling as convinced of the spotless innocence of my child as I do. So
will write no more on this head.

"Having determined, as best under all circumstances, to wait till your
illness was over, I have kept my dear Margaret in strict retirement
at home (which, as she is your wife, you will acknowledge I had no
obligation to do), until you were well enough to come forward and do her
justice before her family and yours. I have not omitted to make almost
daily inquiries after you, up to the time of penning these lines, and
shall continue so to do until your convalescence, which I sincerely
hope may be speedily at hand; I am unfortunately obliged to ask that our
first interview, when you are able to see me and my daughter, may not
take place at North Villa, but at some other place, any you like to fix
on. The fact is, my wife, whose wretched health has been a trouble and
annoyance to us for years past, has now, I grieve to say, under pressure
of this sad misfortune, quite lost her reason. I am sorry to say that
she would be capable of interrupting us here, in a most undesirable
manner to all parties, and therefore request that our first happy
meeting may not take place at my house.

"Trusting that this letter will quite remove all unpleasant feelings
from your mind, and that I shall hear from you soon, on your
much-to-be-desired recovery,

"I remain, dear Sir,

"Your faithful, obedient servant,

                          "STEPHEN SHERWIN.

"P. S.--I have not been able to find out where that scoundrel Mannion,
has betaken himself to; but if you should know, or suspect, I wish to
tell you, as a proof that my indignation at his villany is as great as
yours, that I am ready and anxious to pursue him with the utmost rigour
of the law, if law can only reach him--paying out of my own pocket all
expenses of punishing him and breaking him for the rest of his life, if
I go through every court in the country to do it!--S. S."

Hurriedly as I read over this wretched and revolting letter, I detected
immediately how the new plot had been framed to keep me still deceived;
to heap wrong after wrong on me with the same impunity. She was not
aware that I had followed her into the house, and had heard all from
her voice and Mannion's--she believed that I was still ignorant of
everything, until we met at the door-step; and in this conviction she
had forged the miserable lie which her father's hand had written down.
Did he really believe it, or was he writing as her accomplice? It was
not worth while to inquire: the worst and darkest discovery which it
concerned me to make, had already proclaimed itself--she was a liar and
a hypocrite to the very last!

And it was this woman's lightest glance which had once been to me as
the star that my life looked to!---it was for this woman that I had
practised a deceit on my family which it now revolted me to think
of; had braved whatever my father's anger might inflict; had risked
cheerfully the loss of all that birth and fortune could bestow! Why had
I ever risen from my weary bed of sickness?--it would have been better,
far better, that I had died!

But, while life remained, life had its trials and its toils, from which
it was useless to shrink. There was still another letter to be opened:
there was yet more wickedness which I must know how to confront.

The second of Mr. Sherwin's letters was much shorter than the first, and
had apparently been written not more than a day or two back. His tone
was changed; he truckled to me no longer--he began to threaten. I
was reminded that the servant's report pronounced me to have been
convalescent for several days past: and was asked why, under these
circumstances, I had never even written. I was warned that my silence
had been construed greatly to my disadvantage; and that if it continued
longer, the writer would assert his daughter's cause loudly and
publicly, not to my father only, but to all the world. The letter
ended by according to me three days more of grace, before the fullest
disclosure would be made.

For a moment, my indignation got the better of me. I rose, to go that
instant to North Villa and unmask the wretches who still thought to
make their market of me as easily as ever. But the mere momentary delay
caused by opening the door of my room, restored me to myself. I felt
that my first duty, my paramount obligation, was to confess all to my
father immediately; to know and accept my future position in my own
home, before I went out from it to denounce others. I returned to the
table, and gathered up the letters scattered on it. My heart beat fast,
my head felt confused; but I was resolute in my determination to tell
my father, at all hazards, the tale of degradation which I have told in
these pages.

I waited in the stillness and loneliness, until it grew nearly dark. The
servant brought in candles. Why could I not ask him whether my father
and Clara had come home yet? Was I faltering in my resolution already?

Shortly after this, I heard a step on the stairs and a knock at my
door.--My father? No! Clara. I tried to speak to her unconcernedly, when
she came in.

"Why, you have been walking till it is quite dark, Clara!"

"We have only been in the garden of the Square--neither papa nor I
noticed how late it was. We were talking on a subject of the deepest
interest to us both."

She paused a moment, and looked down; then hurriedly came nearer to me,
and drew a chair to my side. There was a strange expression of sadness
and anxiety in her face, as she continued:

"Can't you imagine what the subject was? It was you, Basil. Papa is
coming here directly, to speak to you."

She stopped once more. Her cheeks reddened a little, and she
mechanically busied herself in arranging some books that lay on the
table. Suddenly, she abandoned this employment; the colour left her
face; it was quite pale when she addressed me again, speaking in very
altered tones; so altered, that I hardly recognised them as hers.

"You know, Basil, that for a long time past, you have kept some secret
from us; and you promised that I should know it first; but I--I have
changed my mind; I have no wish to know it, dear: I would rather we
never said anything about it." (She coloured, and hesitated a little
again, then proceeded quickly and earnestly:) "But I hope you will tell
it all to papa: he is coming here to ask you--oh, Basil! be candid with
him, and tell him everything; let us all be to one another what we were
before this time last year! You have nothing to fear, if you only speak
openly; for I have begged him to be gentle and forgiving with you, and
you know he refuses me nothing. I only came here to prepare you; to beg
you to be candid and patient. Hush! there is a step on the stairs. Speak
out, Basil, for my sake--pray, pray, speak out, and then leave the rest
to me."

She hurriedly left the room. The next minute, my father entered it.

Perhaps my guilty conscience deceived me, but I thought he looked at me
more sadly and severely than I had ever seen him look before. His voice,
too, was troubled when he spoke. This was a change, which meant much in
him.

"I have come to speak to you," he said, "on a subject about which I had
much rather you had spoken to me first."

"I think, Sir, I know to what subject you refer. I--"

"I must beg you will listen to me as patiently as you can," he rejoined;
"I have not much to say."

He paused, and sighed heavily. I thought he looked at me more kindly. My
heart grew very sad; and I yearned to throw my arms round his neck, to
give freedom to the repressed tears which half choked me, to weep out on
his bosom my confession that I was no more worthy to be called his son.
Oh, that I had obeyed the impulse which moved me to do this!

"Basil," pursued my father, gravely and sadly; "I hope and believe that
I have little to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you. I think
I am justified in saying, that very few fathers would have acted towards
a son as I have acted for the last year or more. I may often have
grieved over the secresy which has estranged you from us; I may even
have shown you by my manner that I resented it; but I have never used my
authority to force you into the explanation of your conduct, which you
have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I rested on that implicit
faith in the honour and integrity of my son, which I will not yet
believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I fear, has led me
to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed to your own
well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here to atone for
this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It deeply concerns
my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of our family, to
know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to be nothing else)
that stretched my son senseless in the open street, and afflicted him
afterwards with an illness which threatened his reason and his life.
You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal this; and I only use my
legitimate authority over my own children, when I tell you that I must
now know all. If you persist in remaining silent, the relations between
us must henceforth change for life."

"I am ready to make my confession, Sir. I only ask you to believe
beforehand, that if I have sinned grievously against you, I have been
already heavily punished for the sin. I am afraid it is impossible that
your worst forebodings can have prepared you--"

"The words you spoke in your delirium--words which I heard, but will not
judge you by--justified the worst forebodings."

"My illness has spared me the hardest part of a hard trial, Sir, if it
has prepared you for what I have to confess; if you suspect--"

"I do not _suspect_--I feel but too _sure,_ that you, my second son,
from whom I had expected far better things, have imitated in secret--I
am afraid, outstripped--the worst vices of your elder brother."

"My brother!--my brother's faults mine! Ralph!"

"Yes, Ralph. It is my last hope that you will now imitate Ralph's
candour. Take example from that best part of him, as you have already
taken example from the worst."

My heart grew faint and cold as he spoke. Ralph's example! Ralph's
vices!--vices of the reckless hour, or the idle day!--vices whose stain,
in the world's eye, was not a stain for life!--convenient, reclaimable
vices, that men were mercifully unwilling to associate with grinning
infamy and irreparable disgrace! How far--how fearfully far, my father
was from the remotest suspicion of what had really happened! I tried to
answer his last words, but the apprehension of the life-long humiliation
and grief which my confession might inflict on him--absolutely
incapable, as he appeared to be, of foreboding even the least degrading
part of it--kept me speechless. When he resumed, after a momentary
silence, his tones were stern, his looks searching--pitilessly
searching, and bent full upon my face.

"A person has been calling, named Sherwin," he said, "and inquiring
about you every day. What intimate connection between you authorises
this perfect stranger to me to come to the house as frequently as he
does, and to make his inquiries with a familiarity of tone and manner
which has struck every one of the servants who have, on different
occasions, opened the door to him? Who is this Mr. Sherwin?"

"It is not with him, Sir, that I can well begin. I must go back--"

"You must go back farther, I am afraid, than you will be able to return.
You must go back to the time when you had nothing to conceal from me,
and when you could speak to me with the frankness and directness of a
gentleman."

"Pray be patient with me, Sir; give me a few minutes to collect myself.
I have much need for a little self-possession before I tell you all."

"All? your tones mean more than your words--_they_ are candid, at least!
Have I feared the worst, and yet not feared as I ought? Basil!--do you
hear me, Basil? You are trembling very strangely; you are growing pale!"

"I shall be better directly, Sir. I am afraid I am not quite so strong
yet as I thought myself. Father! I am heart-broken and spirit-broken: be
patient and kind to me, or I cannot speak to you."

I thought I saw his eyes moisten. He shaded them a moment with his hand,
and sighed again--the same long, trembling sigh that I had heard before.
I tried to rise from my chair, and throw myself on my knees at his feet.
He mistook the action, and caught me by the arm, believing that I was
fainting.

"No more to-night, Basil," he said, hurriedly, but very gently; "no more
on this subject till to-morrow."

"I can speak now, Sir; it is better to speak at once."

"No: you are too much agitated; you are weaker than I thought.
To-morrow, in the morning, when you are stronger after a night's rest.
No! I will hear nothing more. Go to bed now; I will tell your sister not
to disturb you to-night. To-morrow, you shall speak to me; and speak in
your own way, without interruption. Good-night, Basil, good-night."

Without waiting to shake hands with me, he hastened to the door, as if
anxious to hide from my observation the grief and apprehension which had
evidently overcome him. But, just at the moment when he was leaving
the room, he hesitated, turned round, looked sorrowfully at me for an
instant, and then, retracing his steps, gave me his hand, pressed mine
for a moment in silence, and left me.

After the morrow was over, would he ever give me that hand again?

III.

The morning which was to decide all between my father and me, the
morning on whose event hung the future of my home life, was the
brightest and loveliest that my eyes ever looked on. A cloudless sky,
a soft air, sunshine so joyous and dazzling that the commonest objects
looked beautiful in its light, seemed to be mocking at me for my heavy
heart, as I stood at my window, and thought of the hard duty to be
fulfilled, on the harder judgment that might be pronounced, before the
dawning of another day.

During the night, I had arranged no plan on which to conduct the
terrible disclosure which I was now bound to make--the greatness of the
emergency deprived me of all power of preparing myself for it. I thought
on my father's character, on the inbred principles of honour which ruled
him with the stern influence of a fanaticism: I thought on his pride of
caste, so unobtrusive, so rarely hinted at in words, and yet so firmly
rooted in his nature, so intricately entwined with every one of his
emotions, his aspirations, his simplest feelings and ideas: I thought
on his almost feminine delicacy in shrinking from the barest mention of
impurities which other men could carelessly discuss, or could laugh over
as good material for an after-dinner jest. I thought over all this,
and when I remembered that it was to such a man that I must confess the
infamous marriage which I had contracted in secret, all hope from his
fatherly affection deserted me; all idea of appealing to his chivalrous
generosity became a delusion in which it was madness to put a moment's
trust.

The faculties of observation are generally sharpened, in proportion
as the faculties of reflection are dulled, under the influence of
an absorbing suspense. While I now waited alone in my room, the most
ordinary sounds and events in the house, which I never remembered
noticing before, absolutely enthralled me. It seemed as if the noise of
a footstep, the echo of a voice, the shutting or opening of doors down
stairs, must, on this momentous day, presage some mysterious calamity,
some strange discovery, some secret project formed against me, I
knew not how, or by whom. Two or three times I found myself listening
intently on the staircase, with what object I could hardly tell. It was
always, however, on those occasions, that a dread, significant quiet
appeared to have fallen suddenly on the house. Clara never came to
me, no message arrived from my father; the door-bell seemed strangely
silent, the servants strangely neglectful of their duties above stairs.
I caught myself returning to my own room softly, as if I expected that
some hidden catastrophe might break forth, if sound of my footsteps were
heard.

Would my father seek me again in my own room, or would he send for me
down stairs? It was not long before the doubt was decided. One of the
servants knocked at my door--the servant whose special duty it had
been to wait on me in my illness. I longed to take the man's hand, and
implore his sympathy and encouragement while he addressed me.

"My master, Sir, desires me to say that, if you feel well enough, he
wishes to see you in his own room."

I rose, and immediately followed the servant. On our way, we passed the
door of Clara's private sitting-room--it opened, and my sister came
out and laid her hand on my arm. She smiled as I looked at her; but the
tears stood thick in her eyes, and her face was deadly pale.

"Think of what I said last night, Basil," she whispered, "and, if hard
words are spoken to you, think of _me._ All that our mother would have
done for you, if she had been still among us, _I_ will do. Remember
that, and keep heart and hope to the very last."

She hastily returned to her room, and I went on down stairs. In the
hall, the servant was waiting for me, with a letter in his hand.

"This was left for you, Sir, a little while ago. The messenger who
brought it said he was not to wait for an answer."

It was no time for reading letters--the interview with my father was too
close at hand. I hastily put the letter into my pocket, barely noticing,
as I did so, that the handwriting on the address was very irregular, and
quite unknown to me.

I went at once into my father's room.

He was sitting at his table, cutting the leaves of some new books
that lay on it. Pointing to a chair placed opposite to him, he briefly
inquired after my health; and then added, in a lower tone--

"Take any time you like, Basil, to compose and collect yourself. This
morning my time is yours."

He turned a little away from me, and went on cutting the leaves of the
books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself in
any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or hope,
or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for the
reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak--I mechanically
looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence
to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly
foreshadowed in the faces of the old family portraits which hung above
the fireplace.

What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even
by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In moments
of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the
past, in spite of the present--in moments of bitter affliction, it can
still recur to every-day trifles, in spite of ourselves. While I now
sat silent in my father's room, long-forgotten associations of childhood
connected with different parts of it, began to rise on my memory in the
strangest and most startling independence of any influence or control,
which my present agitation and suspense might be supposed to exercise
over them. The remembrances that should have been the last to be
awakened at this time of heavy trial, were the very remembrances which
now moved within me.

With burdened heart and aching eyes I looked over the walls around me.
There, in that corner, was the red cloth door which led to the library.
As children, how often Ralph and I had peeped curiously through that
very door, to see what my father was about in his study, to wonder
why he had so many letters to write, and so many books to read. How
frightened we both were, when he discovered us one day, and reproved
us severely! How happy the moment afterwards, when we had begged him
to pardon us, and were sent back to the library again with a great
picture-book to look at, as a token that we were both forgiven! Then,
again, there was the high, old-fashioned, mahogany press before the
window, with the same large illustrated folio about Jewish antiquities
lying on it, which, years and years ago, Clara and I were sometimes
allowed to look at, as a special treat, on Sunday afternoons; and which
we always examined and re-examined with never-ending delight--standing
together on two chairs to reach up to the thick, yellow-looking leaves,
and turn them over with our own hands. And there, in the recess between
two bookcases, still stood the ancient desk-table, with its rows of
little inlaid drawers; and on the bracket above it the old French clock,
which had once belonged to my mother, and which always chimed the hours
so sweetly and merrily. It was at that table that Ralph and I always
bade my father farewell, when we were going back to school after the
holidays, and were receiving our allowance of pocket-money, given to us
out of one of the tiny inlaid drawers, just before we started. Near that
spot, too, Clara--then a little rosy child--used to wait gravely and
anxiously, with her doll in her arms, to say good-bye for the last time,
and to bid us come back soon, and then never go away again. I turned,
and looked abruptly towards the window; for such memories as the room
suggested were more than I could bear.

Outside, in the dreary strip of garden, the few stunted, dusky trees
were now rustling as pleasantly in the air, as if the breeze that
stirred them came serenely over an open meadow, or swept freshly under
their branches from the rippling surface of a brook. Distant, but yet
well within hearing, the mighty murmur from a large thoroughfare--the
great mid-day voice of London--swelled grandly and joyously on the ear.
While, nearer still, in a street that ran past the side of the house,
the notes of an organ rang out shrill and fast; the instrument was
playing its liveliest waltz tune--a tune which I had danced to in
the ball-room over and over again. What mocking memories within, what
mocking sounds without, to herald and accompany such a confession as I
had now to make!

Minute after minute glided on, inexorably fast; and yet I never broke
silence. My eyes turned anxiously and slowly on my father.

He was still looking away from me, still cutting the leaves of the books
before him. Even in that trifling action, the strong emotions which he
was trying to conceal, were plainly and terribly betrayed. His hand,
usually so steady and careful, trembled perceptibly; and the paper-knife
tore through the leaves faster and faster--cutting them awry, rending
them one from another, so as to spoil the appearance of every page.
I believe he _felt_ that I was looking at him; for he suddenly
discontinued his employment, turned round towards me, and spoke--

"I have resolved to give you your own time," he said, "and from that
resolve I have no wish to depart--I only ask you to remember that every
minute of delay adds to the suffering and suspense which I am enduring
on your account." He opened the books before him again, adding in lower
and colder tones, as he did so--"In _your_ place, Ralph would have
spoken before this."

Ralph, and Ralph's example quoted to me again!--I could remain silent no
longer.

"My brother's faults towards you, and towards his family, are not such
faults as mine, Sir," I began. "I have _not_ imitated his vices; I have
acted as he would _not_ have acted. And yet, the result of my error will
appear far more humiliating, and even disgraceful, in your eyes, than
the results of any errors of Ralph's."

As I pronounced the word "disgraceful," he suddenly looked me full in
the face. His eyes lightened up sternly, and the warning red spot rose
on his pale cheeks.

"What do you mean by 'disgraceful?'" he asked abruptly; "what do you
mean by associating such a word as _disgrace_ with your conduct--with
the conduct of a son of mine?"

"I must reply to your question indirectly, Sir," I continued. "You asked
me last night who the Mr. Sherwin was who has called here so often--"

"And this morning I ask it again. I have other questions to put to you,
besides--you called constantly on a woman's name in your delirium. But I
will repeat last night's question first--who _is_ Mr. Sherwin?"

"He lives--"

"I don't ask where he lives. Who is he? What is he?"

"Mr. Sherwin is a linen-draper--"

"You owe him money?--you have borrowed money of him? Why did you not
tell me this before? You have degraded my house by letting a man call at
the door--I know it!--in the character of a dun. He has inquired about
you as his 'friend,'--the servants told me of it. This money-lending
tradesman, your _'friend!'_ If I had heard that the poorest labourer
on my land called you 'friend,' I should have held you honoured by the
attachment and gratitude of an honest man. When I hear that name given
to you by a tradesman and money-lender, I hold you contaminated by
connection with a cheat. You were right, Sir!--this _is_ disgrace; how
much do you owe? Where are your dishonoured acceptances? Where have you
used _my_ name and _my_ credit? Tell me at once--I insist on it!"

He spoke rapidly and contemptuously, and rising from his chair as he
ended, walked impatiently up and down the room.

"I owe no money to Mr. Sherwin, Sir--no money to any one."

He stopped suddenly:

"No money to any one?" he repeated very slowly, and in very altered
tones. "You spoke of disgrace just now. There is a worse disgrace then
that you have hidden from me, than debts dishonourably contracted?"

At this moment, a step passed across the hall. He instantly turned
round, and locked the door on that side of the room--then continued:

"Speak! and speak honestly if you can. How have you been deceiving me?
A woman's name escaped you constantly, when your delirium was at its
worst. You used some very strange expressions about her, which it was
impossible altogether to comprehend; but you said enough to show that
her character was one of the most abandoned; that her licentiousness--it
is too revolting to speak of _her_--I return to _you._ I insist on
knowing how far your vices have compromised you with that vicious
woman."

"She has wronged me--cruelly, horribly, wronged me--" I could say no
more. My head drooped on my breast; my shame overpowered me.

"Who is she? You called her Margaret, in your illness--who is she?"

"She is Mr. Sherwin's daughter--" The words that I would fain have
spoken next, seemed to suffocate me. I was silent again.

I heard him mutter to himself:

_"That_ man's daughter!--a worse bait than the bait of money!"

He bent forward, and looked at me searchingly. A frightful paleness flew
over his face in an instant.

"Basil!" he cried, "in God's name, answer me at once! What is Mr.
Sherwin's daughter to _you?_"

"She is my wife!"

I heard no answer--not a word, not even a sigh. My eyes were blinded
with tears, my face was bent down; I saw nothing at first. When I raised
my head, and dashed away the blinding tears, and looked up, the blood
chilled at my heart.

My father was leaning against one of the bookcases, with his hands
clasped over his breast. His head was drawn back; his white lips moved,
but no sound came from them. Over his upturned face there had passed
a ghastly change, as indescribable in its awfulness as the change of
death.

I ran horror-stricken to his side, and attempted to take his hand.
He started instantly into an erect position, and thrust me from him
furiously, without uttering a word. At that fearful moment, in that
fearful silence, the sounds out of doors penetrated with harrowing
distinctness and merriment into the room. The pleasant rustling of
the trees mingled musically with the softened, monotonous rolling of
carriages in the distant street, while the organ-tune, now changed to
the lively measure of a song, rang out clear and cheerful above both,
and poured into the room as lightly and happily as the very sunshine
itself.

For a few minutes we stood apart, and neither of us moved or spoke. I
saw him take out his handkerchief, and pass it over his face, breathing
heavily and thickly, and leaning against the bookcase once more. When he
withdrew the handkerchief and looked at me again, I knew that the sharp
pang of agony had passed away, that the last hard struggle between his
parental affection and his family pride was over, and that the great
gulph which was hence-forth to separate father and son, had now opened
between us for ever.

He pointed peremptorily to me to go back to my former place, but did not
return to his own chair. As I obeyed, I saw him unlock the door of the
bookcase against which he had been leaning, and place his hand on one of
the books inside. Without withdrawing it from its place, without turning
or looking towards me, he asked if I had anything more to say to him.

The chilling calmness of his tones, the question itself, and the time at
which he put it, the unnatural repression of a single word of rebuke,
of passion, or of sorrow, after such a confession as I had just made,
struck me speechless. He turned a little away from the bookcase--still
keeping his hand on the book inside--and repeated the question. His
eyes, when they met mine, had a pining, weary look, as if they had been
long condemned to rest on woeful and revolting objects; his expression
had lost its natural refinement, its gentleness of repose, and had
assumed a hard, lowering calmness, under which his whole countenance
appeared to have shrunk and changed--years of old age seemed to have
fallen on it, since I had spoken the last fatal words!

"Have you anything more to say to me?"

On the repetition of that terrible question, I sank down in the chair at
my side, and hid my face in my hands. Unconscious how I spoke, or why I
spoke; with no hope in myself, or in him; with no motive but to invite
and bear the whole penalty of my disgrace, I now disclosed the miserable
story of my marriage, and of all that followed it. I remember nothing of
the words I used---nothing of what I urged in my own defence. The sense
of bewilderment and oppression grew heavier and heavier on my brain;
I spoke more and more rapidly, confusedly, unconsciously, until I was
again silenced and recalled to myself by the sound of my father's voice.
I believe I had arrived at the last, worst part of my confession, when
he interrupted me.

"Spare me any more details," he said, bitterly, "you have humiliated me
sufficiently--you have spoken enough."

He removed the book on which his hand had hitherto rested from the case
behind him, and advanced with it to the table--paused for a moment, pale
and silent--then slowly opened it at the first page, and resumed his
chair.

I recognised the book instantly. It was a biographical history of his
family, from the time of his earliest ancestors down to the date of
the births of his own children. The thick quarto pages were beautifully
illuminated in the manner of the ancient manuscripts; and the narrative,
in written characters, had been produced under his own inspection. This
book had cost him years of research and perseverance. The births and
deaths, the marriages and possessions, the battle achievements and
private feuds of the old Norman barons from whom he traced his descent,
were all enrolled in regular order on every leaf--headed, sometimes
merely by representations of the Knight's favourite weapon; sometimes by
copies of the Baron's effigy on his tombstone in a foreign land. As
the history advanced to later dates, beautiful miniature portraits were
inlaid at the top of each leaf; and the illuminations were so managed as
to symbolize the remarkable merits or the peculiar tastes of the subject
of each biography. Thus, the page devoted to my mother was surrounded
by her favourite violets, clustering thickest round the last melancholy
lines of writing which told the story of her death.

Slowly and in silence, my father turned over the leaves of the book
which, next to the Bible, I believe he most reverenced in the world,
until he came to the last-written page but one--the page which I knew,
from its position, to be occupied by my name. At the top, a miniature
portrait of me, when a child, was let into the leaf. Under it, was the
record of my birth and names, of the School and College at which I had
been taught, and of the profession that I had adopted. Below, a large
blank space was left for the entry of future particulars. On this page
my father now looked, still not uttering a word, still with the same
ghastly calmness on his face. The organ-notes sounded no more; but
the trees rustled as pleasantly, and the roar of the distant carriages
swelled as joyously as ever on the ear. Some children had come out to
play in the garden of a neighbouring house. As their voices reached
us, so fresh, and clear, and happy--but another modulation of the
thanksgiving song to God which the trees were singing in the summer
air--I saw my father, while he still looked on the page before him,
clasp his trembling hands over my portrait so as to hide it from sight.

Then he spoke; but without looking up, and more as if he were speaking
to himself than to me. His voice, at other times clear and gentle in its
tones, was now so hard and harsh in its forced calmness and deliberation
of utterance, that it sounded like a stranger's.

"I came here, this morning," he began, "prepared to hear of faults and
misfortunes which should pain me to the heart; which I might never,
perhaps, be able to forget, however willing and even predetermined
to forgive. But I did _not_ come prepared to hear, that unutterable
disgrace had been cast on me and mine, by my own child. I have no words
of rebuke or of condemnation for this: the reproach and the punishment
have fallen already where the guilt was--and not there only. My son's
infamy defiles his brother's birthright, and puts his father to shame.
Even his sister's name--"

He stopped, shuddering. When he proceeded, his voice faltered, and his
head drooped low.

"I say it again:--you are below all reproach and all condemnation; but I
have a duty to perform towards my two who are absent, and I have a last
word to say to _you_ when that duty is done. On this page--" (as he
pointed to the family history, his tones strengthened again)--"on this
page there is a blank space left, after the last entry, for writing the
future events of your life. Here, then, if I still acknowledge you to
be my son; if I think your presence and the presence of my daughter
possible in the same house, must be written such a record of dishonour
and degradation as has never yet defiled a single page of this
book--here, the foul stain of your marriage, and its consequences, must
be admitted to spread over all that is pure before it, and to taint to
the last whatever comes after. This shall not be. I have no faith or
hope in you more. I know you now, only as an enemy to me and to my
house--it is mockery and hypocrisy to call you son; it is an insult to
Clara, and even to Ralph, to think of you as my child. In this record
your place is destroyed--and destroyed for ever. Would to God I could
tear the past from my memory, as I tear the leaf from this book!"

As he spoke, the hour struck; and the old French clock rang out gaily
the same little silvery chime which my mother had so often taken me
into her room to listen to, in the bygone time. The shrill, lively peal
mingled awfully with the sharp, tearing sound, as my father rent out
from the book before him the whole of the leaf which contained my name;
tore it into fragments, and cast them on the floor.

He rose abruptly, after he had closed the book again. His cheeks flushed
once more; and when he next spoke, his voice grew louder and louder
with every word he uttered. It seemed as if he still distrusted his
resolution to abandon me; and sought, in his anger, the strength of
purpose which, in his calmer mood, he might even yet have been unable to
command.

"Now, Sir," he said, "we treat together as strangers. You are Mr.
Sherwin's son--not mine. You are the husband of his daughter--not a
relation of my family. Rise, as I do: we sit together no longer in the
same room. Write!" (he pushed pen, ink, and paper before me,)
"write your terms there--I shall find means to keep you to a written
engagement--the terms of your absence, for life, from this country;
and of hers: the terms of your silence, and of the silence of your
accomplices; of all of them. Write what you please; I am ready to pay
dearly for your absence, your secrecy, and your abandonment of the name
you have degraded. My God! that I should live to bargain for hushing up
the dishonour of my family, and to bargain for it with _you._"

I had listened to him hitherto without pleading a word in my own behalf;
but his last speech roused me. Some of _his_ pride stirred in my heart
against the bitterness of his contempt. I raised my head, and met his
eye steadily for the first time--then, thrust the writing materials away
from me, and left my place at the table.

"Stop!" he cried. "Do you pretend that you have not understood me?"

"It is _because_ I have understood you, Sir, that I go. I have deserved
your anger, and have submitted without a murmur to all that it could
inflict. If you see in my conduct towards you no mitigation of my
offence; if you cannot view the shame and wrong inflicted on me, with
such grief as may have some pity mixed with it--I have, I think, the