And then rose up before his imagination those drooping steadfast eyes; and Grace Harvey, the suspected, the despised, seemed to look through and through his inmost soul, as through a home which belonged of right to her, and where no other woman must dwell, or could dwell; for she was there; and he knew it; and knew that, even if he never married till his dying day, he should sell his soul by marrying any one but her.  “And why should I not sell my soul?” asked he, almost fiercely.  “I sell my talents, my time, my strength; I’d sell my life to-morrow, and go to be shot for a shilling a day, if it would make the old man comfortable for life; and why not my soul too?  Don’t that belong to me as much as any other part of me?  Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure?  What is this intolerable fascination?  Witch!  I almost believe in mesmerism now!—­ Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I’d sell my coat, if the bargain’s but a good one?”

And if he did, who would ever know?—­Not even Grace herself.  The secret was his, and no one else’s.

Or if they did know, what matter?  Dozens of men sell their souls every year, and thrive thereon; tradesmen, lawyers, squires, popular preachers, great noblemen, kings and princes.  He would be in good company, at all events:  and while so many live in glass houses, who dare throw stones?

But then, curiously enough, there came over him a vague dread of possible evil, such as he had never felt before.  He had been trying for years to raise himself above the power of fortune; and he had succeeded ill enough:  but he had never lost heart.  Robbed, shipwrecked, lost in deserts, cheated at cards, shot in revolutions, begging his bread, he had always been the same unconquerable light-hearted Tom, whose motto was, “Fall light, and don’t whimper:  better luck next round.”  But now, what if he played his last court-card, and Fortune, out of her close-hidden hand, laid down a trump thereon with quiet sneering smile?  And she would!  He knew, somehow, that he should not thrive.  His children would die of the measles, his horses break their knees, his plate be stolen, his house catch fire, and Mark Armsworth die insolvent.  What a fool he was, to fancy such nonsense!  Here he had been slaving all his life to keep his father:  and now he could keep him; why, he would be justified, right, a good son, in doing the thing.  How hard, how unjust of those upper Powers in which he believed so vaguely, to forbid his doing it!

And how did he know that they forbid him?  That is too deep a question to be analysed here:  but this thing is noteworthy, that there came next over Tom’s mind a stranger feeling still—­a fancy that if he did this thing, and sold his soul, he could not answer for himself thenceforth on the score of merest respectability; could not answer for himself not to drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly riot thenceforth.  He felt as if he should cast away his last anchor, and drift helplessly down into utter shame and ruin.  It may have been very fanciful:  but so he felt; and felt it so strongly too, that in less time than I have taken to write this he had turned to Mark Armsworth:—­