“Ah, to be sure,” said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality.  “Didn’t I always do it?  Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but little.  I’ve often thought since, I might have done better by telling the old woman that I’d found her daughter and her grandchild:  it would have suited my feelings better; I’ve got a soft place in my heart.  But you’ve buried the old lady by this time, I suppose—­it’s all one to her now.  And you’ve got your fortune out of that profitable business which had such a blessing on it.  You’ve taken to being a nob, buying land, being a country bashaw.  Still in the Dissenting line, eh?  Still godly?  Or taken to the Church as more genteel?”

This time Mr. Raffles’ slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue was worse than a nightmare, because it held the certitude that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery.  Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a slanderer.  The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make people disbelieve him.  “But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth about you,” said discerning consciousness.  And again:  it seemed no wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the direct falsehood of denying true statements.  It was one thing to look back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of falsehood.

But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time to the utmost.

“I’ve not had such fine luck as you, by Jove!  Things went confoundedly with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them.  I married when I came back—­a nice woman in the tobacco trade—­very fond of me—­ but the trade was restricted, as we say.  She had been settled there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case.  Josh and I never hit it off.  However, I made the most of the position, and I’ve always taken my glass in good company.  It’s been all on the square with me; I’m as open as the day.  You won’t take it ill of me that I didn’t look you up before.  I’ve got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory.  I thought you were trading and praying away in London still, and didn’t find you there.  But you see I was sent to you, Nick—­perhaps for a blessing to both of us.”

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle:  no man felt his intellect more superior to religious cant.  And if the cunning which calculates on the meanest feelings in men could be, called intellect, he had his share, for under the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode, there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so many moves at chess.  Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move, and he said, with gathered resolution—­