u without your requiring
proof--it would be much pleasanter for you, and a great relief to me.
Oh! beyond _words_! But if not--if you will _go on_ entangling yourself
with this foolish girl, Sophie, and this boarding-house keeper, and
all--I _shall_ be obliged--I shall hate to _do_ it, but there will be no
alternative--to give you the _explanation_ of what I tell you now."

"Well! let her!" cried the young man, rising roughly from his chair, and
shouldering backward and forward across his room with short, incensed
steps. "If her proofs can prevent my marriage, let her bring them. She'd
better be quick about it! Four days from now! They'd better never have
come at all. It's her interest as much as mine--more than mine. She's a
half-crazy old creature. She can do nothing for herself. If she has any
thing to say, let her say it. I'm no baby, to shape my life after an old
woman's story. Who is she? What is she to me?

"Let something happen, I say," continued he, stretching out his great
arms, with the fists clinched. "I'm tired of this--the life of a dog
with his tail between his legs. Is it _I_ who go about, afraid to look
man or woman in the face? Am I the same who came here six months ago?
Did I come here to learn this? Who was it taught it to me, then? I say,
I've been deceived; it's no work of mine. Professor Valeyon--he's made
me a subject for experiment; he's tried his theories on me; dissected
me, and filled in the parts that were wanting. It's a dangerous
business, Professor Valeyon. You've lost one daughter; the other may go
too."

Bressant's voice, which had been growing hoarser and more rapid as he
went on, abruptly sank, at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had
any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and
more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It
breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like
the hiss of a serpent.

He stopped his short, passionate walk, and leaned against his table,
with his arms once more folded. The idea that he had been tampered with
had gained possession of him, and nothing tends more to demoralize a
man, and make him unmanageably angry. His was an uncandid position,
without doubt: he was attempting to lay upon others the responsibility
which--the greater part of it, at least--should have been borne by
himself; but still, the vein of reasoning he pursued was connected, and
comprehensible, and was re