Rust's face;
his breath grew less short and gasping; and finally he sat up, and looked
about him. His eye was wandering and vacant, and sad and heart-broken
indeed was his tone.

'My own dear child!' said he, in a voice so mild and winning, and so
teeming with fondness, that none would have recognized it as Rust's. 'I've
had a strange dream, my poor little Mary, about you, whom I have garnered
up in my heart of hearts.'

His voice sank until his words were unintelligible, and then he laughed
feebly, and passed his hand backward and forward in the air, as if
caressing the head of a child. 'Your eyes are very bright, my little girl,
but they beam with happiness; and so they shall, always. So they shall--so
they shall. Kiss me, my own darling!' He extended his arms, and drew them
toward him, as if they enfolded the child, and then bending down his
cheek, rocked to and fro, and sang a song, such as is used in lulling an
infant to sleep.

'My God! He's clean gone mad!' said Jones, staring at him with starting
eyes. 'Dished and done up in ten minutes! That's what I call going to
Bedlam by express.'

Although Grosket uttered not a word of comment, his keen gray eye, bright
as a diamond; his puckered brows; his compressed lips, and his hands
tightly clasped together, showed that he viewed his work with emotions of
the most powerful kind. At length he said, in low tone, as if communing
with himself rather than addressing the only person who seemed capable of
hearing him: 'If he goes mad he'll spoil my scheme. He'll not reap the
whole harvest that I have sown for him. He must live; ay, and in his sane
mind, to feel its full bitterness. I, _I_ have lived,' said he, striking
his breast; '_I_ have borne up against the same curse that now is on him.
_I_ have had the same feeling gnawing at my heart, giving me no rest, no
peace. _He_ must suffer. He _must_ not take refuge from himself in
madness. He _shall_ not,' said he, savagely. 'Ha! ha! who would have
thought that the flint which the old fellow calls his heart had feeling in
it?'

Whether these remarks reached Rust's ear, or whether it was that his mind,
after the first shock of the intelligence was over, was beginning to
rally, is a matter of doubt; but from some cause or other, he suddenly
discontinued his singing, passed his hand across his forehead, held his
long hair back from his face, and stared about him; his eye wandering from
Grosket to Jones, and around the room,