ad got his hated wife up stairs at his
mercy--thanks to his refusal of the money which Julius had offered
to him. He was living in a place absolutely secluded from public
observation on all sides of it--thanks to his resolution to remain at
the cottage, even after his landlady had insulted him by sending him
a notice to quit. Every thing had been prepared, every thing had been
sacrificed, to the fulfillment of one purpose--and how to attain that
purpose was still the same impenetrable mystery to him which it had been
from the first!

What was the other alternative? To accept the proposal which Julius had
made. In other words, to give up his vengeance on Anne, and to turn his
back on the splendid future which Mrs. Glenarm's devotion still offered
to him.

Never! He would go back to the books. He was not at the end of them. The
slightest hint in the pages which were still to be read might set his
sluggish brain working in the right direction. The way to be rid of her,
without exciting the suspicion of any living creature, in the house or
out of it, was a way that might be found yet.

Could a man, in his position of life, reason in this brutal manner?
could he act in this merciless way? Surely the thought of what he was
about to do must have troubled him this time!

Pause for a moment--and look back at him in the past.

Did he feel any remorse when he was plotting the betrayal of Arnold in
the garden at Windygates? The sense which feels remorse had not been put
into him. What he is now is the legitimate consequence of what he was
then. A far more serious temptation is now urging him to commit a far
more serious crime. How is he to resist? Will his skill in rowing
(as Sir Patrick once put it), his swiftness in running, his admirable
capacity and endurance in other physical exercises, help him to win a
purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his own cruelty? No!
The moral and mental neglect of himself, which the material tone of
public feeling about him has tacitly encouraged, has left him at the
mercy of the worst instincts in his nature--of all that is most vile
and of all that is most dangerous in the composition of the natural
man. With the mass of his fellows, no harm out of the common has come of
this, because no temptation out of the common has passed their way. But
with _him,_ the case is reversed. A temptation out of the common has
passed _his_ way. How does it find him prepared to meet it? It fin