ight make it a condition with Mr. Mortimer that Hesper's intimacy with
her should cease; whereas, if once they were married, the husband's
disfavor would, she believed, only strengthen the wife's predilection.
Having so far gained her end, it remained, however, almost as desirable
as before that she should do nothing to fix or increase his
dislike--nay, that, if within the possible, she should become pleasing
to him. Did not even hate turn sometimes to its mighty opposite? But
she understood so little of the man with whom she had to deal that her
calculations were ill-founded.

She was right in believing that Mr. Redmain disliked her, but she was
wrong in imagining that he had therefore any objection to her being for
the present in the house. He certainly did not relish the idea of her
continuing to be his wife's inseparable companion, but there would be
time enough to get rid of her after he had found her out. For she had
not long been one of his _family,_ before he knew, with insight
unerring, that she had to be found out, and was therefore an
interesting subject for the exercise of his faculty of moral analysis.
He was certain her history was composed mainly of secrets. As yet,
however, he had discovered nothing.

I must just remind my reader of the intellectual passion I have already
mentioned as characterizing Mr. Redmain's mental constitution. His
faults and vices were by no means peculiar; but the bent to which I
refer, certainly no virtue, and springing originally from predominant
evil, was in no small degree peculiar, especially in the degree to
which, derived as it was from his father, he had in his own being
developed it. Most men, he judged with himself, were such fools as well
as rogues, that there was not the least occasion to ask what they were
after: they did but turn themselves inside out before you! But, on the
other hand, there were not a few who took pains, more or less
successful, to conceal their game of life; and such it was the delight
of his being to lay bare to his own eyes-not to those of other people;
that, he said, would be to spoil his game! Men were his library, he
said-his history, his novels, his sermons, his philosophy, his poetry,
his whole literature--and he did not like to have his books thumbed by
other people. Human nature, in its countless aspects, was all about
him, he said, every mask crying to him to take it off. Unhappily, it
was but the morbid anatomy of human nature he care