“Have you said all that you came to say?”

“I have spoken the substance of my message.  Much could I elaborate upon such a theme; but it is not one, Varney, which is congenial to my heart; for your sake, however, and for the sakes of those whom I hold most dear, let me implore you to act in this matter with a kindly consideration.  Proclaim your motives; you cannot say that they are not such as we may aid you in.”

Varney was silent for several moments; he seemed perceptibly moved by the manner of the young man, as well as by the matter of his discourse.  In fact, one would suppose that Charles Holland had succeeded in investing what he said with some sort of charm that won much upon the fancy of Sir Francis Varney, for when he ceased to speak, the latter said in a low voice,—­

“Go on, go on; you have surely much more to say.”

“No, Varney; I have said enough, and not thus much would I have said had I not been aware, most certainly and truly aware, without the shadow of a doubt, by your manner, that you were most accessible to human feeling.”

“I accessible to human feeling! know you to whom you speak?  Am I not he before whom all men shudder, whose name has been a terror and a desolation; and yet you can talk of my human feelings.  Nay, if I had had any, be sure they would have been extinguished by the persecutions I have endured from those who, you know, with savage ferocity have sought my life.”

“No, Varney; I give you credit for being a subtler reasoner than thus to argue; you know well that you were the aggressor to those parties who sought your life; you know well that with the greatest imaginable pains you held yourself up to them as a thing of great terror.”

“I did—­I did.”

“You cannot, then, turn round upon ignorant persons, and blame them because your exertions to make yourself seem what you wish were but too successful.”

“You use the word seem,” said Varney, with a bitterness of aspect, “as if you would imply a doubt that I am that which thousands, by their fears, would testify me to be.”

“Thousands might,” said Charles Holland; “but not among them am I, Varney; I will not be made the victim of superstition.  Were you to enact before my very eyes some of those feats which, to the senses of others, would stamp you as the preternatural being you assume to be, I would doubt the evidence of my own senses ere I permitted such a bugbear to oppress my brain.”

“Go,” said Sir Francis Varney, “go:  I have no more words for you; I have nothing to relate to you.”

“Nay, you have already listened sufficiently to me to give me a hope that I had awakened some of the humanity that was in your nature.  Do not, Sir Francis Varney, crush that hope, even as it was budding forth; not for my own sake do I ask you for revelations; that may, perhaps—­must be painful for you; but for the sake of Flora Bannerworth, to whom you owe abundance of reparation.”