Maltravers had
already risen from his brief prayer. With locked and rigid countenance,
with arms folded on his breast, he stood confronting the Italian,
who advanced towards him with a menacing brow and arm, but halted
involuntarily at the sight of that commanding aspect.

"Well, then," said Maltravers at last, with a tone preternaturally calm
and low, "you then are the man. Speak on--what arts did you employ?"

"Your own letter. When, many months ago, I wrote to tell you of the
hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask your opinion of her I loved,
how did you answer me? With doubts, with depreciation, with covert and
polished scorn, of the very woman whom, with a deliberate treachery, you
afterwards wrested from my worshipping and adoring love. That letter I
garbled. I made the doubts you expressed of my happiness seem doubts of
your own. I changed the dates--I made the letter itself appear written,
not on your first acquaintance with her, but subsequent to your plighted
and accepted vows. Your own handwriting convicted you of mean suspicions
and of sordid motives. These were my arts."

"They were most noble. Do you abide by them--or repent?"

"For what I have done to _thee_ I have no repentance. Nay, I regard thee
still as the aggressor. Thou hast robbed me of her who was all the world
to me--and, be thine excuses what they may, I hate thee with a hate that
cannot slumber--that abjures the abject name of remorse! I exult in the
very agonies thou endurest. But for her--the stricken--the dying! O God,
O God! The blow falls upon mine own head!"

"Dying!" said Maltravers, slowly and with a shudder. "No, no--not
dying--or what art thou? Her murderer! And what must I be? Her avenger!"

Overpowered with his own passions, Cesarini sank down and covered his
face with his clasped hands. Maltravers stalked gloomily to and fro the
apartment. There was silence for some moments.

At length Maltravers paused opposite Cesarini and thus addressed him:

"You have come hither not so much to confess the basest crime of which
man can be guilty, as to gloat over my anguish and to brave me to
revenge my wrongs. Go, man, go--for the present you are safe. While she
lives, my life is not mine to hazard--if she recover, I can pity you
and forgive. To me your offence, foul though it be, sinks below contempt
itself. It is the consequences of that crime as they relate to--to--that
noble and suffering woman, which can alone raise the despica