“No, no; you can’t have seen him, and you probably never will; but if he does come here again, don’t listen to him.  He is half-fiend and half-idiot, and no good comes of his mouthing and muttering.  Avoid him, I warn you, avoid him.  Let me see:  how shall I describe him?  Let me see.  You remember—­you remember Berkley—­Sir Wynston Berkley.  Well, he greatly resembles that dead villain:  he has all the same grins, and shrugs, and monkey airs, and his face and figure are like.  But he is a grimed, ragged, wasted piece of sin, little better than a beggar—­a shrunken, malignant libel on the human shape.  Avoid him, I tell you, avoid him:  he is steeped in lies and poison, like the very serpent that betrayed us.  Beware of him, I say, for if he once gains your ear, he will delude you, spite of all your vigilance; he will make you his accomplice, and thenceforth, inevitably, there is nothing but mortal and implacable hatred between us!”

Frightened at this wild language, Rhoda did not answer, but looked up in his face in silence.  A fearful transformation was there—­a scowl so livid and maniacal, that her very senses seemed leaving her with terror.  Perhaps the sudden alteration observable in her countenance, as this spectacle so unexpectedly encountered her, recalled him to himself; for he added, hurriedly, and in a tone of gentler meaning—­

“Rhoda, Rhoda, watch and pray.  My daughter, my child! keep your heart pure, and nothing bad can approach you for ill.  No, no; you are good, and the good need not fear!”

Suddenly Marston burst into tears, as he ended this sentence, and wept long and convulsively.  She did not dare to speak, or even to move; but after a while he ceased, appeared uneasy, half ashamed and half angry; and looking with a horrified and bewildered glance into her face, he said—­

“Rhoda, child, what—­what have I said?  My God! what have I been saying?  Did I—­do I look ill?  Oh, Rhoda, Rhoda, may you never feel this!”

He turned away from her without awaiting her answer, and walked away with the appearance of intense agitation, as if to leave her.  He turned again, however, and with a face pallid and sunken as death, approached her slowly—­

“Rhoda,” said he, “don’t tell what I have said to anyone—­don’t, I conjure you, even to Charles.  I speak too much at random, and say more than I mean—­a foolish, rambling habit:  so do not repeat one word of it, not one word to any living mortal.  You and I, Rhoda, must have our little secrets.”

He ended with an attempt at a smile, so obviously painful and fear-stricken that as he walked hurriedly away, the astounded girl burst into a bitter flood of tears.  What was, what could be, the meaning of the shocking scene she had then been forced to witness?  She dared not answer the question.  Yet one ghastly doubt haunted her like her shadow—­a suspicion that the malignant and hideous light of madness was already glaring upon his mind.  As, leaning upon the arm of her astonished attendant, she retracted her steps, the trees, the flowers, the familiar hall-door, the echoing passages—­every object that met her eye—­seemed strange and unsubstantial, and she gliding on among them in a horrid dream.