lest he should be thought unmanly; but this was so powerful that it kept head against all other motives; and although it could not decide him to advance, prevented him from definitely running away. At last the clock indicated ten minutes past the hour. Young Scuddamore's spirit began to rise; he peered round the corner and saw no one at the place of meeting; doubtless his unknown correspondent had wearied and gone away. He became as bold as he had formerly been timid. It seemed to him that if he came at all to the appointment, however late, he was clear from the charge of cowardice. Nay, now he began to suspect a hoax, and actually complimented himself on his shrewdness in having suspected and outmanoeuvred his mystifiers. So very idle a thing is a boy's mind!
Armed with these reflections, he advanced boldly from his corner; but he had not taken above a couple of steps before a hand was laid upon his arm. He turned and beheld a lady cast in a very large mould and with somewhat stately features, but bearing no mark of severity in her looks.
'I see that you are a very self-confident lady-killer,' said she; 'for you make yourself expected. But I was determined to meet you. When a woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance, she has long ago left behind her all considerations of petty pride.'
Silas was overwhelmed by the size and attractions of his correspondent and the suddenness with which she had fallen upon him. But she soon set him at his ease. She was very towardly and lenient in her behaviour; she led him on to make pleasantries, and then applauded him to the echo; and in a very short time, between blandishments and a liberal exhibition of warm brandy, she had not only induced him to fancy himself in love, but to declare his passion with the greatest vehemence.
'Alas!' she said; 'I do not know whether I ought not to deplore this moment, great as is the pleasure you give me by your words. Hitherto I was alone to suffer; now, poor boy, there will be two. I am not my own mistress. I dare not ask you to visit me at my own house, for I am watched by jealous eyes. Let me see,' she added; 'I am older than you, although so much weaker; and while I trust in your courage and determination, I must employ my own knowledge of the world for our mutual benefit. Where do you live?'
He told her that he lodged in a furnished hotel, and named the street and number.
She seemed to reflect for some minutes, with an effort of mind.
'I see,' she said at last. 'You will be faithful and obedient, will you not?'
Silas assured her eagerly of his fidelity.
'To-morrow night, then,' she continued, with an encouraging smile, 'you must remain at home all the evening; and if any friends should visit you, dismiss them at once on any pretext that most readily presents itself. Your door is probably shut by ten?' she asked.
'By eleven,' answered Silas.
'At a quarter past eleven,' pursued the lady, 'leave the house. Merely cry for the door to be opened, and be sure you fall into no talk with the porter, as that might ruin everything. Go straight to the corner where the Luxembourg Gardens join the Boulevard; there you will find me waiting you. I trust you to follow my advice from point to point: and remember, if you fail me in only one particular, you will bring the sharpest trouble on a woman whose only fault is to have seen and loved you.'
'I cannot see the use of all these instructions,' said Silas.
'I believe you are already beginning to treat me as a master,' she cried, tapping him with her fan upon the arm. 'Patience, patience! that should come in time. A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying. Do as I ask you, for Heaven's sake, or I will answer for nothing. Indeed, now I think of it,' she added, with the manner of one who has just seen further into a difficulty, 'I find a better plan of keeping importunate visitors away. Tell the porter to admit no one for you, except a person who may come that night to claim a debt; and speak with some feeling, as though you feared the interview, so that he may take your words in earnest.'
'I think you may trust me to protect myself against intruders,' he said, not without a little pique.
'That is how I should prefer the thing arranged,' she answered coldly. 'I know you men; you think nothing of a woman's reputation.'
Silas blushed and somewhat hung his head; for the scheme he had in view had involved a little vain-glorying before his acquaintances.
'Above all,' she added, 'do not speak to the porter as you come out.'
'And why?' said he. 'Of all your instructions, that seems to me the least important.'
'You at first doubted the wisdom of some of the others, which you now see to be very necessary,' she replied. 'Believe me, this also has its uses; in time you will see them; and what am I to think of your affection, if you refuse me such trifles at our first interview?'
Silas confounded himself in explanations and apologies; in the middle of these she looked up at the clock and clapped her hands together with a suppressed scream.
'Heavens!' she cried, 'is it so late? I have not an instant to lose. Alas, we poor women, what slaves we are! What have I not risked for you already?'
And after repeating her directions, which she artfully combined with caresses and the most abandoned looks, she bade him farewell and disappeared among the crowd.
The whole of the next day Silas was filled with a sense of great importance; he was now sure she was a countess; and when evening came he minutely obeyed her orders and was at the corner of the Luxembourg Gardens by the hour appointed. No one was there. He waited nearly half-an-hour, looking in the face of every one who passed or loitered near the spot; he even visited the neighbouring corners of the Boulevard and made a complete circuit of the garden railings; but there was no beautiful countess to throw herself into his arms. At last, and most reluctantly, he began to retrace his steps towards his hotel. On the way he remembered the words he had heard pass between Madame Zephyrine and the blond young man, and they gave him an indefinite uneasiness.
'It appears,' he reflected, 'that every one has to tell lies to our porter.'
He rang the bell, the door opened before him, and the porter in his bed-clothes came to offer him a light.
'Has he gone?' inquired the porter.
'He? Whom do you mean?' asked Silas, somewhat sharply, for he was irritated by his disappointment.
'I did not notice him go out,' continued the porter, 'but I trust you paid him. We do not care, in this house, to have lodgers who cannot meet their liabilities.'
'What the devil do you mean?' demanded Silas rudely. 'I cannot understand a word of this farrago.'
'The short blond young man who came for his debt,' returned the other. 'Him it is I mean. Who else should it be, when I had your orders to admit no one else?'
'Why, good God, of course he never came,' retorted Silas.
'I believe what I believe,' returned the porter, putting his tongue into his cheek with a most roguish air.
'You are an insolent scoundrel,' cried Silas, and, feeling that he had made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned and began to run upstairs.
'Do you not want a light then?' cried the porter.
But Silas only hurried the faster, and did not pause until he had reached the seventh landing and stood in front of his own door. There he waited a moment to recover his breath, assailed by the worst forebodings and almost dreading to enter the room.
When at last he did so he was relieved to find it dark, and to all appearance, untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly visible, he knew he must be at the foot of the bed, and had only to feel his way along it in order to reach the table in question.
He lowered his hand, but what it touched was not simply a counterpane - it was a counterpane with something underneath it like the outline of a human leg. Silas withdrew his arm and stood a moment petrified.
'What, what,' he thought, 'can this betoken?'
He listened intently, but there was no sound of breathing. Once more, with a great effort, he reached out the end of his finger to the spot he had already touched; but this time he leaped back half a yard, and stood shivering and fixed with terror. There was something in his bed. What it was he knew not, but there was something
