se. Mr. Falkland quietly ordered me to return home, and take along
with me the groom he had brought with him. I obeyed in silence.

I afterwards understood, that he enquired minutely of Mr. Forester the
circumstances of our meeting; and that that gentleman, perceiving that
the meeting itself was discovered, and guided by habits of frankness,
which, when once rooted in a character, it is difficult to counteract,
told Mr. Falkland every thing that had passed, together with the remarks
it had suggested to his own mind. Mr. Falkland received the
communication with an ambiguous and studied silence, which by no means
operated to my advantage in the already poisoned mind of Mr. Forester.
His silence was partly the direct consequence of a mind watchful,
inquisitive, and doubting; and partly perhaps was adopted for the sake
of the effect it was calculated to produce, Mr. Falkland not being
unwilling to encourage prejudices against a character which might one
day come in competition with his own.

As to me, I went home indeed, for this was not a moment to resist. Mr.
Falkland, with a premeditation to which he had given the appearance of
accident, had taken care to send with me a guard to attend upon his
prisoner. I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in
the history of despotism, from which the wretched victim is never known
to come forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were
entering a dungeon. I reflected that I was at the mercy of a man,
exasperated at my disobedience, and who was already formed to cruelty by
successive murders. My prospects were now closed; I was cut off for ever
from pursuits that I had meditated with ineffable delight; my death
might be the event of a few hours. I was a victim at the shrine of
conscious guilt, that knew neither rest nor satiety; I should be blotted
from the catalogue of the living, and my fate remain eternally a secret;
the man who added my murder to his former crimes, would show himself the
next morning, and be hailed with the admiration and applause of his
species.

In the midst of these terrible imaginations, one idea presented itself
that alleviated my feelings. This was the recollection of the strange
and unaccountable tranquillity which Mr. Falkland had manifested, when
he discovered me in company with Mr. Forester. I was not deceived by
this. I knew that the calm was temporary, and would be succeeded by a
tumult and whirlwind of the most dre