“I ask for no man’s belief.  I know that which I know, and, gathering experience from the coincidences of different phenomena, I am compelled to arrive at certain conclusions.  Believe what you please, doubt what you please; but I say again that I am not as other men.”

“I am in no condition to depute your proposition; I wish not to dispute it; but you are wandering, Varney, from the point.  I wait anxiously for a continuation of your narrative.”

“I know that I am wandering from it—­I know well that I am wandering from it, and that the reason I do so is that I dread that continuation.”

“That dread will nor be the less for its postponement.”

“You are right; but tell me, Charles Holland, although you are young you have been about in the great world sufficiently to form correct opinions, and to understand that which is related to you, drawing proper deductions from certain facts, and arriving possibly at more correct conclusions than some of maturer years with less wisdom.”

“I will freely answer, Varney, any question you may put to me.”

“I know it; tell me then what measure of guilt you attach to me in the transaction I have noticed to you.”

“It seems then to me that, not contemplating the man’s murder, you cannot be accused of the act, although a set of fortuitous circumstances made you appear an accomplice to its commission.”

“You think I may be acquitted?”

“You can acquit yourself, knowing that you did not contemplate the murder.”

“I did not contemplate it.  I know not what desperate deed I should have stopped short at then, in the height of my distress, but I neither contemplated taking that man’s life, nor did I strike the blow which sent him from existence.”

“There is even some excuse as regards the higher crime for Marmaduke Bannerworth.”

“Think you so?”

“Yes; he thought that you were killed, and impulsively he might have struck the blow that made him a murderer.”

“Be it so.  I am willing, extremely willing that anything should occur that should remove the odium of guilt from any man, Be it so, I say, with all my heart; but now, Charles Holland, I feel that we must meet again ere I can tell you all; but in the meantime let Flora Bannerworth rest in peace—­she need dread nothing from me.  Avarice and revenge, the two passions which found a home in my heart, are now stifled for ever.”

“Revenge! did you say revenge?”

“I did; whence the marvel, am I not sufficiently human for that?”

“But you coupled it with the name of Flora Bannerworth.”

“I did, and that is part of my mystery.”

“A mystery, indeed, to imagine that such a being as Flora could awaken any such feeling in your heart—­a most abundant mystery.”

“It is so.  I do not affect to deny it:  but yet it is true, although so greatly mysterious, but tell her that although at one time I looked upon her as one whom I cared not if I injured, her beauty and distress changed the current of my thoughts, and won upon me greatly, From the moment I found I had the power to become the bane of her existence, I ceased to wish to be so, and never again shall she experience a pang of alarm from Varney, the vampyre.”