ervation of Dexter's sanity depended on
the healthy condition of his nerves--I could not but feel that I had
done wisely (if I might still hope for success) in hastening my return
from Spain. Knowing what I knew, fearing what I feared, I believed that
his time was near. I felt, when our eyes met by accident, that I was
looking at a doomed man.

I pitied him.

Yes, yes! I know that compassion for him was utterly inconsistent with
the motive which had taken me to his house--utterly inconsistent with
the doubt, still present to my mind, whether Mr. Playmore had really
wronged him in believing that his was the guilt which had compassed
the first Mrs. Eustace's death. I felt this: I knew him to be cruel; I
believed him to be false. And yet I pitied him! Is there a common fund
of wickedness in us all? Is the suppression or the development of that
wickedness a mere question of training and temptation? And is there
something in our deeper sympathies which mutely acknowledges this when
we feel for the wicked; when we crowd to a criminal trial; when we shake
hands at parting (if we happen to be present officially) with the vilest
monster that ever swung on a gallows? It is not for me to decide. I can
only say that I pitied Miserrimus Dexter--and that he found it out.

"Thank you," he said, suddenly. "You see I am ill, and you feel for me.
Dear and good Valeria!"

"This lady's name, sir, is Mrs. Eustace Macallan," interposed Benjamin,
speaking sternly behind him. "The next time you address her, remember,
if you please, that you have no business with her Christian name."

Benjamin's rebuke passed, like Benjamin's retort, unheeded and unheard.
To all appearance, Miserrimus Dexter had completely forgotten that there
was such a person in the room.

"You have delighted me with the sight of you," he went on. "Add to the
pleasure by letting me hear your voice. Talk to me of yourself. Tell me
what you have been doing since you left England."

It was necessary to my object to set the conversation afloat; and this
was as good a way of doing it as any other. I told him plainly how I had
been employed during my absence.

"So you are still fond of Eustace?" he said, bitterly.

"I love him more dearly than ever."

He lifted his hands, and hid his face. After waiting a while, he went
on, speaking in an odd, muffled manner, still under cover of his hands.

"And you leave Eustace in Spain," he said; "and you return to England by
yours