itable business which
had such a blessing on it. You've taken to being a nob, buying land,
being a country bashaw. Still in the Dissenting line, eh? Still
godly? Or taken to the Church as more genteel?"

This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue
was worse than a nightmare, because it held the certitude that it was
not a nightmare, but a waking misery. Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering
nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he
should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a
slanderer. The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make
people disbelieve him. "But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth
about _you_," said discerning consciousness. And again: it seemed no
wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the
direct falsehood of denying true statements. It was one thing to look
back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax
customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of
falsehood.

But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time
to the utmost.

"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went confoundedly
with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of
gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them. I married when I came
back--a nice woman in the tobacco trade--very fond of me--but the
trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled there a good
many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case. Josh
and I never hit it off. However, I made the most of the position, and
I've always taken my glass in good company. It's been all on the
square with me; I'm as open as the day. You won't take it ill of me
that I didn't look you up before. I've got a complaint that makes me a
little dilatory. I thought you were trading and praying away in London
still, and didn't find you there. But you see I was sent to you,
Nick--perhaps for a blessing to both of us."

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more
superior to religious cant. And if the cunning which calculates on the
meanest feelings in men could be, called intellect, he had his share,
for under the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode,
there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so
many moves at chess. Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move,
and he said, with