the full her beauty and
agitation, and his revenge for her "Not at homes."

But after a long time, there was a reaction: she sat down and uttered
some plaintive sounds inarticulate, or nearly; and at last she began to
cry.

Then it cost Falcon an effort not to come in and comfort her; but he
controlled himself and kept quiet.

She rang the bell. She asked for writing paper, and she wrote her unseen
tormentor a humble note, begging him, for old acquaintance, to call on
her, and tell her what his mysterious words meant that had filled her
with agitation.

This done, she went away, with a deep sigh, and Falcon emerged, and
pounced upon her letter.

He kissed it; he read it a dozen times: he sat down where she had sat,
and his base passion overpowered him. Her beauty, her agitation, her
fear, her tears, all combined to madden him, and do the devil's work
in his false, selfish heart, so open to violent passions, so dead to
conscience.

For once in his life he was violently agitated, and torn by conflicting
feelings: he walked about the room more wildly than his victim had; and
if it be true that, in certain great temptations, good and bad angels
fight for a man, here you might have seen as fierce a battle of that
kind as ever was.

At last he rushed out into the air, and did not return till ten o'clock
at night. He came back pale and haggard, and with a look of crime upon
his face.

True Bohemian as he was, he sent for a pint of brandy.

So then the die was cast, and something was to be done that called for
brandy.

He bolted himself in, and drank a wine-glass of it neat; then another;
then another.

Now his pale cheek is flushed, and his eye glitters. Drink forever!
great ruin of English souls as well as bodies.

He put the poker in the fire, and heated it red hot.

He brought Staines's letter, and softened the sealing-wax with the hot
poker; then with his pen-knife made a neat incision in the wax, and
opened the letter. He took out the ring, and put it carefully away. Then
he lighted a cigar, and read the letter, and studied it. Many a man,
capable of murder in heat of passion, could not have resisted the pathos
of this letter. Many a Newgate thief, after reading it, would have felt
such pity for the loving husband who had suffered to the verge of death,
and then to the brink of madness, and for the poor bereaved wife, that
he would have taken the letter down to Gravesend that very night, though
he picke