be in its hiding-place? Why did you preserve, even from Evelyn,
your knowledge of that retreat, and the payment of the loan, which she
asserts you have never communicated to her, from first to last? Why make
mysteries of business transactions which, by the tenor of my father's
will, she had a right to participate in, and be consulted about. Why?"

"I will tell you," he interrupted, gravely, and not without emotion.
"Pause, and I will explain my reasons, painful as it is to me to do
this, and greatly as I compromise myself by so doing, for, should you
choose to be indiscreet, I shall have gained a dangerous enemy. I have
no confidence in Evelyn Erie, in her truth, her sincerity, her honesty,
even. I would not place temptation in her way. There, that is why I
concealed the secrets of the spring-lock and recess in the wall from
her, to secure them for you. As to the depositing of gold in that iron
chest, I did it simply because I knew of no other place so safe and
secret. In my own house none such exists, and, as I never kept gold for
more than a few days after it was received, I thought it scarcely worth
while to place it in the vaults of the bank. As I tell you, it was
removed in September."

Surely no art was ever greater of its kind than that he manifested on
this trying occasion, yet it fell to the earth, like the shedding scales
of a serpent, before my simple discernment. Yet his words, his manner,
did in some strange and unexplained way greatly exonerate Evelyn in my
estimation, at least for a time, of complicity.

How could I consistently believe that two persons, entertaining of each
other such similar and degrading opinions, could trust one another
sufficiently to become confederates? Alas! I did not reflect that it is
of such conflicting elements conspirators and conspiracies themselves
are usually made, and that union of guilt creates eternal enmity.

I could not penetrate such depths of guile! I surrendered myself
readily, I confess, to these fresh convictions. Evelyn was narrow,
selfish, scheming, but, at all events, was not in league with this
vampire. That was much. We might still make common cause against
him--she with her injuries to avenge, I with mine--and preserve intact,
and without his hated interference, that which was left to us at least.

There was comfort in the thought.

While these considerations were photographing themselves on my brain,
with that indescribable rapidity of process whereb