Was it possible, after all, that Mr. Falkland should be the murderer?  It was but a passing thought, and yet what was the meaning of Mr. Falkland’s agonies of mind?  I could not accept Mr. Collins’s view that Mr. Falkland was so much the slave and fool of honour that the shame of Tyrrel’s savage assault alone had driven him to this melancholy and solitude, and compelled the violent outbursts of passion.

II.—­I Learn the Secret

My suspicions would not be set at rest.  No spark of malignity was harboured in my soul.  I reverenced the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland, but I had a mistaken curiosity to find out the truth of Tyrrel’s murder.  Often it seemed that Mr. Falkland was about to speak to me, but the movement always ended in silence.

At last one day he sent for me to his room, and after making me swear never to disclose his confidence, and warning me that he had observed my suspicions, told me that he was the murderer of Tyrrel and the assassin of the two Hawkins.

“This it is to be a gentleman, a man of honour!” Falkland went on, in extreme distress.  “My virtue, my honesty, my everlasting peace of mind, all sacrificed that I may preserve my good name.  And I am as much the fool of fame as ever.  Though I be the blackest of villains, I will leave behind me a spotless and illustrious name.  Why is it that I am compelled to this confidence?  From the love of fame.  I had no alternative but to make you my confidant or my victim, and perhaps my next murder would not have been so fortunate.  I do not want to shed more blood.  It is better to trust you with the whole truth, under every seal of secrecy, than to live in perpetual fear of your penetration.  But look what you have done with your foolishly inquisitive humour.  You shall continue in my service, and I will benefit you in respect of fortune; but I shall always hate you.  If ever an unguarded word escape from your lips, you may expect to pay for it with your death, or worse.  By everything that is sacred, preserve your faith!”

Such was the secret I had been so desirous to know.

“It is a wretched prospect,” I said to myself, “that he holds up to me.  But I will never become an informer.  I will never injure my patron; and therefore he will not be my enemy.”

It was no long time after this that Mr. Forester—­Mr. Falkland’s half-brother—­came to stay in the house while his own residence was being got ready for him, and there being little in common between the two, Mr. Forester being of a peculiarly sociable disposition, our visitor chose to make me his companion.  No sooner was this growing intimacy observed than Mr. Falkland warned me that it was not agreeable to him, and that he would not have it.

“Young man, take warning!” he said to me one day when we were alone.  “You little suspect the extent of my power.  You might as well think of escaping from the power of the omnipresent God as from mine.”