ggest, my lord,
that I'm recovering from a severe illness, and I've been eight hours
without food."

Tom spoke cheerily enough, but in good truth he looked haggard and
out-worn. Lord Bearwarden rang the bell.

"I'm ashamed of myself," said he. "Let's have dinner directly; and as
for this cursed business, don't let us think any more about it till
to-morrow morning."

They sat down accordingly to, good food, well cooked, good wine, well
decanted: in good society, too, well chosen from a select fraternity
usually to be found in this secluded resort. So they feasted, and were
merry, talking of hounds, horses, hunting, racing, weight for age,
wine, women, and what not. The keenest observer, the acutest judge
of his kind, could never have detected that one of these men was
meditating bloodshed, the other prompting him to something very like
murder as an accessory before the fact.

I will never believe that Damocles ate his supper with less appetite,
drank his wine with less zest, for the threatening sword suspended
overhead.

CHAPTER XXVI

BAFFLED

Mr. Ryfe, we may be sure, did not fail to make his appearance in
Berners Street at an early hour on the following day, as soon indeed
as, according to Mr. Stanmore's information, there was any chance of
finding the painter at home. He felt, and he told himself so more than
once, that he was enacting the part of Mephistopheles, without the
supernatural power of that fatal auxiliary, without even a fair
allowance of time to lure his Faust to perdition. He had undertaken a
task that never would have occurred but to a desperate man, and Tom
was desperate, inasmuch as the one hope on which he set his heart
had crumbled to atoms. He had resolved to bring together in active
hostility two men of the world, versed in the usages of society,
themselves perfectly familiar with the code of social honour, that
they might attempt each other's lives beguiled by a delusion gross and
palpable as the common tricks of any fire-eating conjurer at a fair.

The very audacity of the scheme, however, seemed to afford its best
chance of success, and when that success should have been attained,
Tom's fancy, overleaping all intermediate difficulties, revelled in
the wild possibilities of the future. Of bloodshed he took very little
thought. What cared he, with his sad, sore heart, for the lives of
those prosperous men, gifted with social advantages that had been
denied to himself, and th