ad, as they fell from his father's lips:

"Avoid the widow of the man I killed--if the widow still lives. Avoid
the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage--if the maid
is still in her service. And, more than all, avoid the man who bears the
same name as your own. Offend your best benefactor, if that benefactor's
influence has connected you one with the other. Desert the woman who
loves you, if that woman is a link between you and him. Hide yourself
from him under an assumed name. Put the mountains and the seas between
you; be ungrateful; be unforgiving; be all that is most repellent
to your own gentler nature, rather than live under the same roof and
breathe the same air with that man. Never let the two Allan Armadales
meet in this world; never, never, never!"

After reading those sentences, he pushed the manuscript from him,
without looking up. The fatal reserve which he had been in a fair way of
conquering but a few minutes since, possessed itself of him once more.
Again his eyes wandered; again his voice sank in tone. A stranger who
had heard his story, and who saw him now, would have said, "His look is
lurking, his manner is bad; he is, every inch of him, his father's son."

"I have a question to ask you," said Mr. Brock, breaking the silence
between them, on his side. "Why have you just read that passage in your
father's letter?"

"To force me into telling you the truth," was the answer. "You must
know how much there is of my father in me before you trust me to be Mr.
Armadale's friend. I got my letter yesterday, in the morning. Some inner
warning troubled me, and I went down on the sea-shore by myself before I
broke the seal. Do you believe the dead can come back to the world they
once lived in? I believe my father came back in that bright morning
light, through the glare of that broad sunshine and the roar of that
joyful sea, and watched me while I read. When I got to the words that
you have just heard, and when I knew that the very end which he had died
dreading was the end that had really come, I felt the horror that had
crept over him in his last moments creeping over me. I struggled against
myself, as _he_ would have had me struggle. I tried to be all that was
most repellent to my own gentler nature; I tried to think pitilessly of
putting the mountains and the seas between me and the man who bore my
name. Hours passed before I could prevail on myself to go back and run
the risk of meeting