’He is straight,—­straight as the mast of a ship,—­he is tall,—­ his skin is white; he is strong—­do I not know that he is strong—­ how strong!—­oh yes!  Is there a better thing than to be his wife? his well-beloved? the light of his eyes?  Is there for a woman a happier chance?  Oh no, not one!  His wife!—­Paul Lessingham!’

As, with soft cadences, he gave vent to these unlooked-for sentiments, the fashion of his countenance was changed.  A look of longing came into his face—­of savage, frantic longing—­which, unalluring though it was, for the moment transfigured him.  But the mood was transient.

’To be his wife,—­oh yes!—­the wife of his scorn! the despised and rejected!’

The return to the venom of his former bitterness was rapid,—­I could not but feel that this was the natural man.  Though why a creature such as he was should go out of his way to apostrophise, in such a manner, a publicist of Mr Lessingham’s eminence, surpassed my comprehension.  Yet he stuck to his subject like a leech,—­as if it had been one in which he had an engrossing personal interest.

’He is a devil,—­hard as the granite rock,—­cold as the snows of Ararat.  In him there is none of life’s warm blood,—­he is accursed!  He is false,—­ay, false as the fables of those who lie for love of lies,—­he is all treachery.  Her whom he has taken to his bosom he would put away from him as if she had never been,—­he would steal from her like a thief in the night,—­he would forget she ever was!  But the avenger follows after, lurking in the shadows, hiding among the rocks, waiting, watching, till his time shall come.  And it shall come!—­the day of the avenger!—­ay, the day!’

Raising himself to a sitting posture, he threw his arms above his head, and shrieked with a demoniac fury.  Presently he became a trifle calmer.  Reverting to his recumbent position, resting his head upon his hand, he eyed me steadily; then asked me a question which struck me as being, under the circumstances, more than a little singular.

’You know his house,—­the house of the great Paul Lessingham,—­the politician,—­the statesman?’

‘I do not.’

‘You lie!—­you do!’

The words came from him with a sort of snarl,—­as if he would have lashed me across the face with them.

’I do not.  Men in my position are not acquainted with the residences of men in his.  I may, at some time, have seen his address in print; but, if so, I have forgotten it.’

He looked at me intently, for some moments, as if to learn if I spoke the truth; and apparently, at last, was satisfied that I did.

’You do not know it?—­Well!—­I will show it you,—­I will show the house of the great Paul Lessingham.’

What he meant I did not know; but I was soon to learn,—­an astounding revelation it proved to be.  There was about his manner something hardly human; something which, for want of a better phrase, I would call vulpine.  In his tone there was a mixture of mockery and bitterness, as if he wished his words to have the effect of corrosive sublimate, and to sear me as he uttered them.