replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar,
'though whether high or low is of no importance. You have my name very
correctly. Pray what is yours?'

'It cannot concern you much to know, but--'

'True,' interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his
mistake, 'it does not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster,
which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster.'

It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley
Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of incautious anger.
He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they
quivered fast.

'Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' said the boy, 'I want a word with you. I have
wanted it so much, that we have looked out your address in the book, and
we have been to your office, and we have come from your office here.'

'You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,' observed
Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. 'I hope it may prove
remunerative.'

'And I am glad to speak,' pursued the boy, 'in presence of Mr Lightwood,
because it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw my sister.'

For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster
to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the
opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken, turned his
face towards the fire and looked down into it.

'Similarly, it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for
you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found
you with her on the next day. Since then, you have seen my sister often.
You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. And I want to know why?'

'Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?' murmured Eugene, with the air of
a disinterested adviser. 'So much trouble for nothing? You should know
best, but I think not.'

'I don't know, Mr Wrayburn,' answered Bradley, with his passion rising,
'why you address me--'

'Don't you? said Eugene. 'Then I won't.'

He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable
right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch
could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it. Not
another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter, but stood leaning
his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking imperturbably at the
chafing Bradley Headstone with his clutching right-hand, until Bradley
was wellnigh mad.

'Mr Wrayburn,' proceeded the b