erness and dismay. 'I've done as you told me,'
he whispered, breathlessly. 'I've held my tongue about it, and come
straight to _you_!' He caught me by the hand before I could speak, with
a boldness quite new in my experience of him. 'Oh how can I break it to
you!' he burst out. 'I'm beside myself when I think of it!'

"'When you _can_ speak,' I said, putting him into a chair, 'speak out.
I see in your face that you bring me news I don't look for from Thorpe
Ambrose.'

"He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out a
letter. He looked at the letter, and looked at me. 'New--new--news you
don't look for,' he stammered; 'but not from Thorpe Ambrose!'

"'Not from Thorpe Ambrose!'

"'No. From the sea!'

"The first dawning of the truth broke on me at those words. I couldn't
speak--I could only hold out my hand to him for the letter.

"He still shrank from giving it to me. 'I daren't! I daren't!' he said
to himself, vacantly. 'The shock of it might be the death of her.'

"I snatched the letter from him. One glance at the writing on the
address was enough. My hands fell on my lap, with the letter fast held
in them. I sat petrified, without moving, without speaking, without
hearing a word of what Bashwood was saying to me, and slowly realized
the terrible truth. The man whose widow I had claimed to be was a living
man to confront me! In vain I had mixed the drink at Naples--in vain I
had betrayed him into Manuel's hands. Twice I had set the deadly snare
for him, and twice Armadale had escaped me! I came to my sense of
outward things again, and found Bashwood on his knees at my feet,
crying.

"'You look angry,' he murmured, helplessly. 'Are you angry with _me_?
Oh, if you only knew what hopes I had when we last saw each other, and
how cruelly that letter has dashed them all to the ground!'

"I put the miserable old creature back from me, but very gently. 'Hush!'
I said. 'Don't distress me now. I want composure; I want to read the
letter.'

"He went away submissively to the other end of the room. As soon as my
eye was off him, I heard him say to himself, with impotent malignity,
'If the sea had been of my mind, the sea would have drowned him!'

"One by one I slowly opened the folds of the letter; feeling, while I
did so, the strangest incapability of fixing my attention on the very
lines that I was burning to read. But why dwell any longer on sensations
which I can't describe? It will be more to the