Page:What will he do with it.djvu/664

654 on your mantel-piece, the cloven end of the hammer lying beside to crook it when hot from the fire that blazed before me! I say this to show you that I did not come provided; nothing was planned beforehand; all was the project and work of the moment. Such was my haste, I burned myself to the bone with the red iron—feeling no pain, or rather, at that age, bearing all pain without wincing. Before Gunston left you my whole plan was then arranged—my sole instrument fashioned. You groan. But how could I fancy that there would be detection? How imagine that, even if moneys never counted were missed, suspicion could fall on you—a better gentleman than he whom you served? And had it not been for that accursed cloak which you so fondly wrapped round me, when I set off to catch the night-train back to ; if it had not been, I say, for that cloak, there could have been no evidence to criminate either you or me—except that unlucky £5 note, which I pressed on you when we met at, where I was to hide till you had settled with my duns. And why did I press it on you?—because you had asked me if I had wherewithal about me on which to live meanwhile; and I, to save you from emptying your own purse, said, 'Yes;' showed you some gold, and pressed on you the bank-note, which I said I could not want—to go, in small part, toward my debts: it was a childish, inconsistent wish to please you; and you seemed so pleased to take it as a proof that I cared for you."

"For me!—no, no; for honor—for honor—for honor! I thought you cared for honor; and the proof of that care was, thrusting into these credulous hands the share of your midnight plunder!"

"Sir," resumed Jasper, persisting in the same startling combination of feeling, gentler and more reverential than could have been supposed to linger in his breast, and of the moral obtuseness that could not, save by vanishing glimpses, distinguish between crime and its consequences—between dishonor and detection—"Sir, I declare that I never conceived that I was exposing you to danger; nay, I meant, out of the money I had taken, to replace to you what you were about to raise, as soon as I could invent some plausible story of having earned it honestly. Stupid notions and clumsy schemes, as I now look back on them; but, as you say, I had not long left boyhood, and fancying myself deep and knowing, was raw in the craft I had practiced. Basta! basta! basta!"

Jasper, who had risen from his knees while speaking, here stamped heavily on the floor, as if in anger at the heart-stricken