rp
cheek-bones resting on his hands, it only served to bring out his ugly
features in strong relief, together with the little table at which he
sat, and to shroud all the rest of the chamber in a deep sullen gloom.
Raising his eyes, and looking vacantly into this gloom as he made some
mental calculation, Arthur Gride suddenly met the fixed gaze of a man.

'Thieves! thieves!' shrieked the usurer, starting up and folding his
book to his breast. 'Robbers! Murder!'

'What is the matter?' said the form, advancing.

'Keep off!' cried the trembling wretch. 'Is it a man or a--a--'

'For what do you take me, if not for a man?' was the inquiry.

'Yes, yes,' cried Arthur Gride, shading his eyes with his hand, 'it is a
man, and not a spirit. It is a man. Robbers! robbers!'

'For what are these cries raised? Unless indeed you know me, and have
some purpose in your brain?' said the stranger, coming close up to him.
'I am no thief.'

'What then, and how come you here?' cried Gride, somewhat reassured, but
still retreating from his visitor: 'what is your name, and what do you
want?'

'My name you need not know,' was the reply. 'I came here, because I was
shown the way by your servant. I have addressed you twice or thrice, but
you were too profoundly engaged with your book to hear me, and I have
been silently waiting until you should be less abstracted. What I want
I will tell you, when you can summon up courage enough to hear and
understand me.'

Arthur Gride, venturing to regard his visitor more attentively, and
perceiving that he was a young man of good mien and bearing, returned to
his seat, and muttering that there were bad characters about, and
that this, with former attempts upon his house, had made him nervous,
requested his visitor to sit down. This, however, he declined.

'Good God! I don't stand up to have you at an advantage,' said Nicholas
(for Nicholas it was), as he observed a gesture of alarm on the part of
Gride. 'Listen to me. You are to be married tomorrow morning.'

'N--n--no,' rejoined Gride. 'Who said I was? How do you know that?'

'No matter how,' replied Nicholas, 'I know it. The young lady who is
to give you her hand hates and despises you. Her blood runs cold at the
mention of your name; the vulture and the lamb, the rat and the dove,
could not be worse matched than you and she. You see I know her.'

Gride looked at him as if he were petrified with astonishment, but did
not speak; perhaps lacking