superstitions and cruelties of all mankind.  The noisome secret of that night when you followed us, shall reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your fellow-beings, be they whom they may.  You may shield yourself behind your family and your friends—­I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest of them!  Now you have heard me, go!  The next time we meet, you shall acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I speak.  Live the free life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you by her death—­you will know it soon for the life of Cain!”

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come; but the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had spoken, never left me.  Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the crowded streets.  The horror of the fiend-face was still before my eyes, the poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I returned to my lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I entered my room.

“At last you have come back!” he said; “I was determined to stop till you did, if I stayed all day.  Is anything the matter?  Have you got into some worse difficulty than ever?”

“No, Ralph—­no.  What have you to tell me?”

“Something that will rather surprise you, Basil:  I have to tell you to leave London at once!  Leave it for your own interests and for everybody else’s.  My father has found out that Clara has been to see you.”

“Good heavens! how?”

“He won’t tell me.  But he has found it out.  You know how you stand in his opinion—­I leave you to imagine what he thinks of Clara’s conduct in coming here.”

“No! no! tell me yourself, Ralph—­tell me how she bears his displeasure!”

“As badly as possible.  After having forbidden her ever to enter this house again, he now only shows how he is offended, by his silence; and it is exactly that, of course, which distresses her.  Between her notions of implicit obedience to him, and her opposite notions, just as strong, of her sisterly duties to you, she is made miserable from morning to night.  What she will end in, if things go on like this, I am really afraid to think; and I’m not easily frightened, as you know.  Now, Basil, listen to me:  it is your business to stop this, and my business to tell you how.”

“I will do anything you wish—­anything for Clara’s sake!”

“Then leave London; and so cut short the struggle between her duty and her inclination.  If you don’t, my father is quite capable of taking her at once into the country, though I know he has important business to keep him in London.  Write a letter to her, saying that you have gone away for your health, for change of scene and peace of mind—­gone away, in short, to come back better some day.  Don’t say where you’re going, and don’t tell me, for she is sure to ask, and sure to get it out of me if I know.  Then she might be writing to you, and that might be found out, too.  She can’t distress herself about your absence, if you account for it properly, as she distresses herself now—­that is one consideration.  And you will serve your own interests, as well as Clara’s, by going away—­that is another.”