. I have been dragged up under a cloud; made the scape-goat.
How often in the course of your hypocritical days have you wished me
dead? You hear I've a cough; but I cannot promise you it's a churchyard
one. I'm a nuisance; but I suppose I'm not responsible for my existence,
Mrs. Rowe. _I_ was not consulted."

"Viper!"

"And devil too, when needful: remember that." Mr. Charles moved round
the table in the direction of the desk.

"Stand where you are. I would rather give you the clothes from my back
than touch you." Mrs. Rowe, as she stood still turning the lock of the
bureau, and keeping her angry eyes fixed upon the man, was the picture
of all the hate she expressed.

She never took her eyes off him, nor did he quail, while she fumbled in
the drawer in which she kept money. The musical rattle of the gold smote
upon the ear of Mr. Charles.

"Pretty sound," he said, with a smile of hate in his face; "but there is
crisp paper sounds sweeter. Mrs. Rowe, I'm not here for a couple of
yellow-boys. Do you hear that?" He banged the table, and advanced a
step.

"You can't bleed a stone, miscreant."

"Nay, but you can break it, Mrs. Rowe. I mean business to-day. The rarer
I make my visits the better for both of us."

"I am quite of that opinion."

"Then make it as long as you like; you know how."

"Is this ever to end? Have you no shame? Charles, you will end with some
tragedy. A man who can play the part you are playing, must be ready for
crime!"

Mr. Charles shook his head in impatient rage, and made another step
towards Mrs. Rowe.

"Move nearer, and I wake the house, come what may." Mrs. Rowe's face
looked like one cut in grey stone.

"What! and wake the Dean and his lady! What! affright the Reverend
Horace Mohun who counts Mrs. Rowe among the milk-white sheep of his
flock! No; Mrs. Rowe is too prudent a woman--Now." As he ended, she drew
forth a roll of notes. He made a clutch at them--and she started back.

"Charles, it has come to that! Robber! It will be murder some day."

"This day--by----"

Mr. Charles looked the man to make his word good.

Mrs. Rowe was amazed and terrified by the fiend she had conjured up in
the man. He seized the table, and looked a giant in the mighty
expression of his iron will.

"Lay that roll upon the table--or I'll shiver it into a thousand
pieces--and then--and then----Am I to say more?"

Mrs. Rowe fell into a chair. Mr. Charles was at her in an instant, and
had possessi