to him that
he might have been watched on the morning when he secretly entered the
chamber in which the first Mrs. Eustace lay dead. Feeling no scruples
himself to restrain him from listening at doors and looking through
keyholes, he would be all the more ready to suspect other people of the
same practices. With this dread in him, it would naturally occur to his
mind that Mrs. Valeria might meet with the person who had watched him,
and might hear all that the person had discovered--unless he led her
astray at the outset of her investigations. Her own jealous suspicions
of Mrs. Beauly offered him the chance of easily doing this. And he was
all the readier to profit by the chance, being himself animated by the
most hostile feeling toward that lady. He knew her as the enemy who
destroyed the domestic peace of the mistress of the house; he loved
the mistress of the house--and he hated her enemy accordingly. The
preservation of his guilty secret, and the persecution of Mrs. Beauly:
there you have the greater and the lesser motive of his conduct in his
relations with Mrs. Eustace the second!"*

*****

* Note by the writer of the Narrative:

Look back for a further illustration of this point of view to the
scene at Benjamin's house (Chapter XXXV.), where Dexter, in a moment of
ungovernable agitation, betrays his own secret to Valeria.

*****

Benjamin laid down his notes, and took off his spectacles.

"We have not thought it necessary to go further than this," he said. "Is
there any point you can think of that is still left unexplained?"

I reflected. There was no point of any importance left unexplained that
I could remember. But there was one little matter (suggested by the
recent allusions to Mrs. Beauly) which I wished (if possible) to have
thoroughly cleared up.

"Have you and Mr. Playmore ever spoken together on the subject of my
husband's former attachment to Mrs. Beauly?" I asked. "Has Mr. Playmore
ever told you why Eustace did not marry her, after the Trial?"

"I put that question to Mr. Playmore myself," said Benjamin. "He
answered it easily enough. Being your husband's confidential friend and
adviser, he was consulted when Mr. Eustace wrote to Mrs. Beauly, after
the Trial; and he repeated the substance of the letter, at my request.
Would you like to hear what I remember of it, in my turn?"

I owned that I should like to hear it. What Benjamin thereupon told me,
exactly coincided with what Miserrimus Dext