obscured his intelligence? How was it he had not seen at once the
perfectly easy way out of the difficulty which was presented by the
facts themselves? Here is a man, engaged to marry my niece, who has been
discovered keeping a girl at his cottage--who even had the audacity to
take her upstairs with him when he made a call on my wife. Charge him
with it in plain words; break off the engagement publicly in the face
of society; and, if the profligate scoundrel tries to defend himself by
telling the truth, who will believe him--when the girl was seen running
out of his room? and when he refused, on the question being put to him,
to say who she was?

So, in ignorance of his wife's last instructions to Amelius--in equal
ignorance of the compassionate silence which an honourable man preserves
when a woman's reputation is at his mercy--the wretch needlessly plotted
and planned to save his usurped reputation; seeing all things, as such
men invariably do, through the foul light of his own inbred baseness and
cruelty. He was troubled by no retributive emotions of shame or remorse,
in contemplating this second sacrifice to his own interests of the
daughter whom he had deserted in her infancy. If he felt any misgivings,
they related wholly to himself. His head was throbbing, his tongue was
dry; a dread of increasing his illness shook him suddenly. He drank
some of the lemonade at his bedside, and lay down to compose himself to
sleep.

It was not to be done; there was a burning in his eyeballs, there was
a wild irregular beating at his heart, which kept him awake. In some
degree, at least, retribution seemed to be on the way to him already.

Mr. Melton, delicately administering sympathy and consolation to
Regina--whose affectionate nature felt keenly the calamity of her aunt's
death--Mr. Melton, making himself modestly useful, by reading aloud
certain devotional poems much prized by Regina, was called out of the
room by the courier.

"I have just looked in at Mr. Farnaby, sir," said the man; "and I am
afraid he is worse."

The physician was sent for. He thought so seriously of the change in the
patient, that he obliged Regina to accept the services of a professed
nurse. When Mr. Melton started on his return journey the next morning,
he left his friend in a high fever.

CHAPTER 2

The inquiry into the circumstances under which Mrs. Farnaby had died was
held in the forenoon of the next day.

Mr. Melton surprised Amelius