excusing my sudden change of purpose, I started next morning for town. Arrived at my rooms, I only stayed long enough to change my clothes, and then I bent my steps towards Grace-street. The servant, knowing me as an old visitor there, admitted me without hesitation; and I hastened upstairs to her sitting-room. Waiting but to give a light knock, to which I received no answer, I opened the door, and saw Hawthorne and Fanny Berrimore standing by the fire-place, she apparently leaning against his shoulder, as he encircled her waist with his right arm, whilst with his left hand he appeared to be caressing her face. My entrance had been unnoticed. For a moment I stood a spectator; and then with a deadly curse, sprang upon Hawthorne. He turned at the noise, and a look of fear paled his face, as he released his embrace of Fanny, who sank into a chair. The next moment we were engaged in a hand to hand struggle. He stood no chance with me, and in a few moments was stretched bleeding at my feet, my last blow having cut his upper lip quite open.
“Shall I kill you, you dog?” I muttered savagely, as I glared down upon him where he lay, afraid to rise; then I turned to look at Fanny; she was sitting with her head bowed down between her hands, in the same attitude almost as when I saw her after telling her of her brother’s death; and but for the wrath boiling within me, I might have been touched by the graceful drooping attitude, and the remembrance of her desolate condition. But contempt alone predominated; I felt utter scorn for them both; and spurning my prostrate enemy with my foot, as unworthy of me, I left them both without another word.
I walked home quietly enough—my rage was too deep for any outward demonstration. All ideas of Hawthorne’s pretensions to infernal knowledge—for such it really amounted to— were lost sight of in the jealousy I felt in the discovery of Fanny’s duplicity. I could not help brooding over it; for like most men of ordinary sluggish temper, when once aroused, my passions were both deep and permanent. My dislike to Hawthorne had been scarcely augmented by the late event. Fanny seemed to be in my eyes the most guilty of the two; perhaps the thrashing I had inflicted upon my apparently successful rival before Miss Berrimore’s face had something to do with the almost pitying contempt I now felt for him.
The next morning I was on my way back to Devonshire, and moodily sulked there for about three months. Then, as the spring was dawning upon the earth, I took a fresh resolution, and returned once more to London, determined to drown all saddening reminiscences in a burst of dissipation.
A day or two after my arrival, my wayward steps led me into Grace-street, but I saw nothing of Miss Berrimore; again and again I loitered about there and the old place in Farringdon street, but she never came. Thinking that she must have changed her place of abode, I one day knocked at the door, and enquired for her. The same servant that formerly lived there answered my knock; and in reply to my enquiry for Miss Berrimore, stared at me amazedly.
“Did you not know, sir; I thought that she was a friend of yours.”
“Know! Know what?”
“She is dead.”
“Dead!” and the sharp pang that I felt told me how well I must have loved her.
“When did she die?”
“Just about a month ago, sir. She caught a cold one day; and after being ill for about a fortnight, she was suddenly taken worse, and died.”
“Was there anybody with her—any of her friends?”
“No, sir, I don’t think anybody came near her until just before she was taken worse; and then a tall gentleman came here, and used to enquire how she was nearly every day.”
“Tall with dark eyes and hair?”
“Yes, sir; and asked me if I had seen you lately—if you had been to call on Miss Berrimore, that’s to say.”
“Did he see her?”
“Not while she was alive; but after she was dead he went with the doctor, and he seemed very much cut up; and afterwards, in the evening, he came again before she was screwed down in her coffin.”
I left the street after getting all the information I could from the woman. Hawthorne, then, had dared to come back, and death had stepped in and robbed him of his prey. But what was the meaning of his visiting the dead body? and a horrible fear struck chill to my heart. I went to Kensal Green Cemetery, where she was buried, and finding but a very plain and simple stone, had a pretty and ornamental tomb erected, for in her grave I had buried all animosity that I had harbored against her.
Three months dragged slowly on. I was an aimless, moody man, praying to meet my enemy, but finding him not; nor could I gain any information of his whereabouts. I one day fancied that I saw him at a distance, but could not come up with him in time to be certain.
About a week afterwards I was leaning moodily over the parapet of London Bridge one night. The hour was late, and the streets almost deserted; the night was dark and cloudy; occasional squalls of drifting rain came up the river. I stood there for some time looking at the lights of the town and the shipping, at the dark water running beneath my feet, listening to the chiming of the clocks, and weakly giving way to melancholy and despondent feelings. I was perfectly sober, and my brain clear. A solitary policeman was watching me a short distance away, as though he thought that I meditated suicide. A female figure hastily approaching from the opposite side brushed close to me, almost touching me; a strange thrill passed through me, an unrestrainable impulse made me spring after her; I overtook her just as she passed underneath a lamp; it was her!—the woman over whose body I had had a tomb erected in Kensal Green Cemetery was by my side! My exclamation of surprise and horror seemed not to affect her in the least; she kept on her way, and I by her side. The policeman looked keenly at us; he little thought that it was a dead woman who passed him. Some merry party came along, chatting and laughing loudly; how their mirth would have been checked had they known that the nice-looking girl—as I heard one loudly remark about her— had stepped forth from among the buried. She never looked at me as I kept up with her, but steadily pursued her way. I dropped a little behind, as the joyous thought came into my brain that by following her I might find Hawthorne. What an account should he render to me!
On we went, the dead and the living, until she turned down a narrow blind lane, reached a door in a wall at the side, opened it with a key she took from her pocket, and passed in; before she could re-close it I had pushed in, too—into a small courtyard, high buildings rising in the gloomy night all round. She seemed scarcely to notice my intrusion, but hurried on into one of the houses, I still keeping close behind her—into a dark passage and up a narrow stairway; from thence I followed her into a lighted room, where three men were sitting. They took no notice of either of us. A hasty glance assured me that Hawthorne was not amongst them. She opened a door leading into an inner room. I saw a man sitting in a lounging chair, his back towards me. She went up and handed a note to him; I followed, for I saw who it was—at last, I had him! He read the letter through, I standing quietly behind his chair, my heart leaping gladly. He tore the note up, laughing lightly.
“Well, Nelly, you have—” He turned as he spoke, and saw me. His exclamation of fear and terrified retreat was, oh, such music to me! The next instant he called loudly for help, for he saw murder in my face. The men from the other room rushed in, but before they could come I had hurled him half strangled on the floor, and was standing over him with a hastily snatched up decanter in my hand. “Order them back!” I cried, as they were rushing at me, “or your life pays the forfeit first! I’ll beat your brains out! quick!”
“Back! back!” he cried in an agonised voice. “Don’t kill me, Seamore!”
“Send them out of the room.”
He did so.
“Now,
