University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

When Layton was left in the library by Gertrude,
he had before him the necessary and difficult
task of communicating to Pedrillo his final decision.
The course of safety and true policy in this,
as in every case, lay in the path of integrity. If
Layton had, with the courage of a manly spirit, resolved
not to shrink from the disclosure of his guilt,
it is possible he might have averted Pedrillo's vengeance;
but, alas! truth and simplicity are the
helm and rudder first lost in the wreck of human
virtue. Layton wrote half a dozen notes, and
finally sealed and sent the following, in which he
committed one of those fatal errors by which men
seem so blindly and so often to prepare the net for
their own destruction.

Whatever Layton might have hoped from the
servility of his note, from his assurances of confidence
in Pedrillo's generosity, written as they were
with so trembling a hand as to be almost illegible,
he looked in vain for a reply. He remained at

home, listening with feverish expectation to the ringing
of the door-bell; a suffering worthy of a poet's inferno,
in all cases of delay and final disappointment.
There came oyster-men, and orange-men, and ashmen,
servants with billets, boys with bills, (scores of
them,) fine gentlemen, and fine ladies; but that for
which his strained ear listened came not, and evening
arrived without any response whatever. He
then despatched a servant with a note, inquiring of
Pedrillo if he had received the former one. The
man returned with a verbal message, that the note
had been received.

“Did you ask,” demanded Layton, “if there
were any answer?”

“I did, sir, and Mr. Pedrillo said if you wished
an answer, he would give it to you this evening at
the place mentioned in your note.”

“The place—I mentioned no place—you have
made some stupid mistake, John; go back and tell
him I specified no place—stop—good Heaven!—
yes it is—it must be there he means,” and he snatched
his hat and was rushing out of the house, when
Flint opened the parlor-door and called out, “we
are waiting for you, Mr. Layton.”

“Waiting—for what?”

“Are you not going to the theatre with the
ladies?”

“No, tell them I have an indispensable engagement;”
and losing every other thought in one terrifying
apprehension, he hastened to the secret rendezvous
of the club. The accustomed party was
assembled there, with the exception of Pedrillo; and
Layton, after an anxious survey of the apartment,

passed into an inner room. Pedrillo soon after entered,
inquired for him, and joined him.

Layton essayed to speak in his usual tone of
friendly recognition. Pedrillo made no reply for
an instant, but looked at him with a diabolical expression
of mingled scorn and malignity, and then
going close to him, he said in a smothered voice,
his teeth firmly set, and beginning with an oath too
horrible to repeat.

“— think ye to escape me?—`unmotived
eruelty!' Have ye not paltered with me for months?
Have ye not baited me on with hollow promises,
finally, and at the very last, when you think I have
no resource, to shake me off! `Unmotived crnelty'
—have I not been a humble suitor at your daughter's
door from day to day? have I not endured her
coldness, her disdain, her shrinking from me, as if
I were a loathsome pestilence—and this in the eye
of gaping fools?—Have I not sat passively by, like
a doating idiot, and seen her cheek change at the
mention of Marion's name?—`Unmotived cruelty!'
has not my purse saved you again and again from
prison—my silence prevented your being kicked
from these doors, and driven from society?”

“Pedrillo—Pedrillo!”

“Nay, I care not who hears me. By Heavens,
Layton, I will speak in a voice that shall be heard
by every man, woman, and child in the city; your
proud name shall be a by-word, coupled with cheat
—liar—”

“Pedrillo!”

“Away—the hour of reckoning has come—
gentlemen,” he cried, placing his hand on the door

in the act of opening it. Layton pushed away his
arm, and stood firmly against the door: “Hear me,
Pedrillo,” he said, “for one instant—you have
no proof—I will deny your charges to my last
breath—they will not believe your assertion against
mine—I their fellow-citizen—you a foreigner—a
Spaniard!”

“A Spaniard!” echoed Pedrillo; he paused for
a moment, and a flash of infernal joy lit up his face;
“my thanks to you—you have forgotten the confession
of guilt in your morning's note? Think ye
the Spaniard's word will be believed by your fellow-citizens,
vouched by the accused's written, voluntary
confession?”

Layton now, for the first time, felt the full and inevitable
force of the power that was about to crush him.
The blood forsook his cheeks and lips, his arms fell
as if they were paralyzed, an aguish chill shook his
whole frame, and he staggered back and sunk into
a chair. No tortures of the rack could surpass
those of the moments of silence and dread that followed.
He was like one expecting the blow of the
executioner, blind, and deaf to every sound but the
horrible hissing in his ears, when the spell of acute
torment was broken by Pedrillo's voice, whispering
close to him, “It is not yet too late!”

Layton gasped for breath; he looked up to Pedrillo
with a wild, vacant gaze, “I tell you,” repeated his
tormentor, glaring on him like a tiger who has his
prey in his clutches, “I tell you it is not yet too late—
the alarm word is not spoken, and you may yet leave
this place with unsullied reputation, if”—

Large drops of sweat stood on Layton's temples.
“If what?—speak, Pedrillo—my brain is on fire.”

“I will speak—and remember, I speak for the
last time—mark my words—I am no longer to be
put off with pretexts, and duped with promises—
Emilie must be mine—without delay—you must accede
to my terms—swear to obey my directions implicitly—not
a breath for deliberation—yes or no?”

“Yes,” was faintly articulated by the recreant father.

“Hold up your right hand then, and swear to
obey my orders—precisely—hold up your right
hand, I say—if,” he added, with a scornful laugh,
“if it be not palsied.”

Layton held up his hand, and repeated after Pedrillo
the most solemn form of adjuration. When
this sacrilege was ended, Pedrillo said, “Come to
my room to-morrow morning at ten o'clock. I shall
have contrived and arranged the means to effect my
purpose, and be ready to give you your instructions.
Now, poor dog, go and join your fellows, and cheat
and be cheated. You are not the only scoundrel,
Layton, that passes along with a fair name; you are
not the only one who feels the shame and the misery
to consist not in the crime, but in the exposure!”

With this parting scoff, Pedrillo left his victim in
an abyss of intolerable humiliation and anguish.
He dared not look back; he could not look forward,
and he madly rushed to the gaming-table,
to seek in its excitements a temporary oblivion.
Before he left it, he had pledged and lost the
largest portion of that money which on the morning

he had received from Gertrude Clarence for so
sacred a purpose.

And this was the man who had so recently manifested,
and really felt, generous instincts and kindly
emotions. But what are instincts and emotions,
compared with principles and habits? Those exhale
in the fierce heat of temptation, while these move
on in a uniform and irresistible current.

From the club, Pedrillo hastened to a scene of
external gaiety which he felt to contrast frightfully
with the wild disorder of the evil spirit, that was anticipating
the judgment of Heaven, and was truly
`its own hell.' He knew that Mrs. Layton and her
party were at the theatre. He ascertained the box
they occupied, and gained admittance at a moment
when his entrance attracted no attention, the audience
being apparently absorbed in observing a spirited
actress, who was going through an animated
scene of a popular comedy. We said all were thus
absorbed; but it was evident to Pedrillo's quick
perception, that two individuals of Mrs. Layton's
party were engaged in a little dramatic episode of
their own, far more interesting to them than any
counterfeit emotion.

Emilie Layton was seated beside Randolph Marion,
simply dressed, without one of those costly ornaments,
Pedrillo's favors, which she had recently
worn in compliance with her mother's requisitions,
and which, regarding them as the insignia of her
slavery, she had cast off and spurned at the first moment
of freedom. Nature's signs of another and willing
thraldom now lent the most exquisite embellishment
to her beautiful face.

The deep, speaking glow of her cheek—the
smile that played over her half-parted lips—the
dazzling ray that shot from beneath her eye-lids,
consciously downcast, were the jewels that revealed
her happy spirit. Marion, at short intervals, uttered
brief sentences, perfectly inaudible to all ears
but Emilie's; but, as every body knows, the atmosphere
of lovers, like that of pure oxygen, gives a
marvellous brilliancy and force, to all things visible
and audible. In front of the lovers, and forgotten
by them, but filling other eyes, sat Mrs. Layton,
Miss Clarence, Miss Mayo, Major Daisy, and Mr.
D. Flint—it was a proud moment for our friend
Flint; he had reached the station for which he had
long panted, as mortals covet the unattainable—he
was perched on the very top-rung of fashion's ladder.
He felt a secret delightful conviction, that he
was to be naturalized, where he had been an alien.
He had told his love—(the damask of Flint's ruddy
cheek was not destined to feed concealment,) and he
was received by Miss Clarence with something more
than her usual kindness of manner. His innocent
vanity knew not what this could mean, if it did not
mean love; and with a brilliant perspective in his
imagination, and seated between Miss Mayo and
Miss Clarence, he looked like the king of the gods,
all-complacent.

Suddenly it seemed that a `change came o'er the
spirit of his dream.' His eye, as it rolled in friendly
recognition from box to box, and glanced athwart
the full pit, was suddenly arrested by the figure of a
plain old man, whose position was nearly in the centre
of the pit, his chin resting on his cane, and who

was devouring the play with the eagerness of a novice.
This old man was—we must let the reader
into the secret—D. Flint's father, and honored by
his son with filial reverence; but never had the worthy
son anticipated such a trial of his virtue, as encountering
his father in such a scene. If the old
man should see him, he knew he would force his
way to him; would greet him in his homely phrase—
would call him by that Christian name, so long, so
studiously, and so successfully concealed.

Any where else, at any other moment, he would
have overcome these shrinkings—but at this critical
point in his destiny, in the presence of Miss Clarence,
and Miss Mayo, aristocratic and exclusive by
birth, fortune, and feeling—and to encounter too,
the sarcastic observation of Mrs. Layton, who
delighted to remind him that he had no rights within
her circle—and Daisy's shrug, which at every approach
of the vulgar looked the pharisaical prayer,
`God save us of the privileged order;'—it was all
too formidable an array of circumstances, even for
D. Flint's iron nerves, and for the first time in his
life, he meditated a pretext and a retreat, and halfrose
from his seat, but his honest soul revolted from
the meanness, and he determined, with the resolution
of a martyr, to maintain his position.

The second act closed, and the curtain fell, and
the greater part of the audience rose, as usual. Flint
(pardon him, gentle reader!) abruptly turned his
back to the pit. He had scarcely effected this movement,
when Miss Clarence said, “What a striking
figure that old man is in the centre of the pit—he

has a fine antique head—do you see him Miss
Mayo?”

“Yes—a hero of the stamp of the revolution, no
doubt—probably one of the survivors of the Bunker-hill
battle whom, as my tory uncle says, time
multiplies like the wood of the true cross.”

“Miss Mayo's random guess, had hit the mark.
He was one of the valiant heroes of that day, still
so `freshly remembered,' and its story, the good old
man had taught his son, and that son did now long
to discharge his memory of its treasure; but he
could far easier have fought his father's battles, than
he could have spoken of them then; for Miss Clarence
exclaimed, “the old man is forcing his way
towards our box.” Flint turned his head just
enough to get an oblique glance at his father, who
was eagerly intent on the box occupied by our party,
but another object than Mr. D. Flint attracted him.
His eye was fixed on Pedrillo, who stood alone
with folded arms—a most conspicuous figure, resting
his back against the door of the box. Flint had his
own emotions to take care of, or he would have noticed
the sudden change in Pedrillo's countenance,
when his eye, turning from its intent gaze on Emilie,
encountered the old man's—he tried to avert it, but
it seemed spell-bound; in vain he tried `to stiffen
the sinews, and summon up the blood.' The ghastly
paleness of his cheek, and his livid lips, betrayed
a thrilling, agonizing consciousness. Still, as if rivetted
to the spot by a law of nature, he stood, while
the stranger continued to approach, speaking to one
and another, and pointing their attention to him,
but evidently receiving no satisfactory reply. When

the old man was near enough to be overheard by
our party—“Will any one” he said, “tell me who
that gentleman is?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared out a vulgar fellow, who
had been amused at the stranger's extraordinary eagerness,
“the old cock thinks he is crowing in his
own barn-yard.”

Nature had been warming and rising in Flint's
honest bosom, and at this insult it overflowed. He
leaped into the pit, with the spirit of Bunker-hill,
and roughly pushing aside the offender with one
arm, he stretched the other towards the old man, exclaiming
in a breath, “impertinent rascal!” and
“dear father, how are you?” His father started,
as if waked from a dream, and grasping the extended
hand, responded to the cordial greeting, “Duty!
my son!—Lord bless you, Duty! how are you, my
boy?” and he consummated the paternal benediction
with a hearty kiss.

By this time all eyes were turned upon the father
and son. Two or three loud laughs and a few
cries of “encore!” were heard, but more honorable
emotions prevailed, and generous sympathy with
the simple demonstration of the true and pure affections
of nature burst forth in a general clap.

The father was happily unconscious that he was
the subject of observation. His interest had reverted
to its first object, but when he turned his eye
in quest of Pedrillo, he had vanished. Duty, amid
better emotions, had a throbbing fear of degradation,
till his startled ear caught Miss Clarence's
voice, seconded by Miss Mayo, asking him to conduct
his father to their box. Flint's glistening eyes

and protracted smile expressed his sense of the goodness
that seemed to set the seal to his fortune. He
immediately conducted his father out of the pit.
When they were alone, “Did you know,” inquired
the father, “the person who stood, with his arms
folded, behind the ladies, that spoke to you?”

“Know him! yes, sir, perfectly well—his name
is Pedrillo; he is a rich Spanish merchant from
Cuba.”

“Spanish!—from Cuba! do you know any thing
more of him?”

“Yes, sir, all about him—but do not stop here,
sir, you are trembling with the cold.”

“Not with the cold,” murmured the old man;
“What else do you know of him, Duty?”

“Why, not much after all; I never liked the
man—though I always thought he looked very much
like you, sir.”

“Do you think so, Duty?”

“Yes, sir, but pray come along father—Mr.
Pedrillo is perfectly well known to our first merchants,
and if you have any curiosity about him,
I can find out, to-morrow, whatever you want to
know.”

“Well, well!” said the old man with a sigh,
“proceed then, Duty;” and he followed his son,
communicating to him as he went, that he had arrived
in town that evening, and not finding him at
his lodgings, and `not feeling like going to sleep
till he saw him, he had come to the theatre to while
away the time.'

As they entered the box the young ladies, undaunted
by Daisy's attempts at witty sarcasms, and Mrs.

Layton's piquant raillery, gave the old gentleman
the place his son had occupied between them, and in
spite of a whisper to Gertrude from Mrs. Layton,
that she had best, en Minêrve, crown Duty's father
as Clairon crowned Voltaire, she and her friend
persisted in rendering him all the respect that the
reverence of youth and fashion could pay to honorable
old age. Flint revelled in the honest triumphs
of a good heart and, it must be confessed, in an
emotion destined to be less permanent.

`She has heard my name, she has seen my father,
and never was she so kind and sociable,' thought
he; and he felt that he had taken a bond of fate—
had made assurance doubly sure.

Layton was punctual to his appointment, and
at ten o'clock the following morning appeared at
the City Hotel.

Pedrillo received him with the coolness and determined
air of a man who has surveyed his battleground,
accurately calculated his forces, and definitively
arranged his plan—he had done so, and
with the hardihood that scruples at no means to
attain a long cherished object. He was driven to
this desperation by the threatening aspect of his
affairs. He had, a few days previous, received letters
from a correspondent in the West Indies, informing
him that his position in the United States
was no longer a safe one; that depositions were
about to be forwarded to judicial officers here,
proving his participation in a noted piratical affair,
in which some of the noble young men of our navy
had suffered. He well knew that justice would
neither linger, nor be sparing in her retribution;

Dangers were accumulating. He had, on the preceding
evening, at the theatre, encountered the eye
that of all others he most dreaded to meet—the
eye of the good old man, his father—for Pedrillo
was, as our readers must long ago have discerned,
the recreant son of the elder Flint—the brother of
our sterling friend Duty—the same still successful
villain who, at fourteen, committed a bold robbery,
and a bloody deed, and fled from his father's roof,
and his country's violated law. How such a scion
should proceed from such a stock, we know not. It
was one of those aberrations in the moral history of
man, that we can no more account for, than for such
physical monsters as the two-headed girl of Paris,
or the Siamese boys.

But, among Mr. Flint's neighbours there were
of course some of those sage persons, who satisfy
themselves with their solution of the riddles of life;
and when little Isaac Flint, (for that was the vernacular
appellation of the heroic Henriques Pedrillo,)
a misdoer from the cradle, broke, for his
sport, a whole brood of young turkies' legs;
sewed up a pet gander's bill; or cut off a cow's
tail; some of these sage expositors would shake
their heads and say, `Spare the rod and spoil the
child.' Others would call to mind certain cruel
deeds done by a maternal ancestor of Isaac, upon
the poor Indians. We honestly confess we are not
among those who believe they can, or who care to
`see through' every thing; we like, now and then,
to indulge ourselves in clouds and mysteries, and
when such an inexplicable wretch as Pedrillo is
found in the bosom of an honest family, we are willing

to confess, what the Scotch woman said of the
fine sermon, we `hae nae the presumption to comprehend
it.'

Pedrillo was a child of fortune—eminently successful
in his bold career. He spent profusely the
wealth he had accumulated in his lawless adventures;
but the caution of middle age began to steal
on him with its experience, and preferring security
to unlimited but uncertain gains, he gradually withdrew
from his bolder enterprises, and established a
fair mercantile house in Cuba, and honorable commercial
relations. Important money transactions
recalled him to his native country. He had been
absent twenty-five years, and he returned without a
fear of meeting a familiar eye, or the belief that any
eye could recognise in his person the rustic farmer
boy. He was soon involved in intimate, and as it
proved, fatal relations with the Laytons. Affairs
had now worked to a point that admitted no farther
temporizing.

Pedrillo dared not delay his departure a moment
after Monday night. He had that all-conquering
energy that finds stimulant in danger, and spur in
difficulty. He was resolved, at whatever cost—there
he had garnered up his soul—to possess himself of
Emilie Layton. His pride, his revenge, all the
passions of his nature, were now enlisted to effect
this purpose. He had measured and weighed her
father, and he believed that though he had not the
hardihood to execute a bold deed, he might be used
as an effective instrument. With this conviction,
Pedrillo continued a plot, in which by a few master
strokes, he meant to achieve the darling object, for

which he had borne repeated disappointments, and
months of irritating delay.

“You look pale and ill, this morning,” he said,
as Layton, ghastly and haggard, and with averted
eye, strode up and down the apartment. “`Fortune,
the jade,' showed you her other face last
night, I understand. She has relieved you of a
goodly portion of the load of her favors, you were
so anxious to transfer to me yesterday morning—
hey, my friend?”

“I came hither on business,” replied Layton, impatient
under the scoff he dared not resent.

“Yes, sir—you did come here on business; and
do it with what appetite you may, it must be done,
and done quickly. You have assured me that it is in
vain for you to contend openly with the inclinations
of your daughter. I believe you. You have weak
nerves, Layton.” Layton, for the first time, raised
his eye to the speaker's face. “I repeat it—you
have weak nerves. You could easier order a surgeon
to amputate a limb for your child, than yourself
extract a sliver from her finger.”

“I am not here to be analyzed, sir.”

“You are here for any purpose, to which I choose
to apply you—you are henceforth an instrument—a
tool—yes, a tool, to be worked by my hand.” Layton's
cheek reddened, and the veins in his forehead
swelled almost to bursting, but he remained silent,
stricken with the sense of the abject state to which
he had sunken. “Listen to me,” continued Pedrillo,
“while I communicate my plan. The grand
masquerade, at the Park theatre, is to be on Monday
evening. Your virtuous public is putting off the

mask of hypocrisy, and putting on other masks.
Miss Clarence, the saint! does not go to the masquerade—conscientious
scruples, no doubt, ha! ha!
Tant mieux, she is disposed of. Miss Emilie too,
purposes to remain at home, tête-à-tête with her
acknowledged lover, Did I not see them together
at the theatre?—I wanted but that to give vigor to
my purpose. Mrs. Layton does go to the masquerade,
with—I know not who—a scene of fine
facilities for ladies of her temper!”

“What has all this to do with—”

“With my plans? Be patient my friend, and I
will tell you. The Juno, in which I must sail for
Cuba, lies in the bay, a few hundred yards from
Whitehall-wharf. The ship is, in all respects, subject
to my orders. She sails at 12 o'clock, on Monday
night. You are to induce Miss Emilie to accompany
you to the masquerade. I think your influence,
or authority, or both, are equal to this
achievement. There we meet. You are soon
obliged to leave the assembly, on any pretext you
choose—I leave that to your own ingenuity. You
ask me to attend Miss Emilie home; a carriage,
previously ordered, will be at the door; we will
drive to the wharf. My boat, well-managed, awaits
us there—a few pulls brings us to the ship, and
once aboard, I am master of my destiny.”

“But, good Heaven, Pedrillo! you have made
no provision for the marriage?”

“Oh, the marriage!—the marriage!” replied Pedrillo,
tauntingly, and smiling, as well he might, at
the importance Layton affixed to a rite, when he
was violating the first law of nature. “The marriage,

my dear sir, that shall be solemnized, if not
on consecrated ground, and by book and bell, yet
with all lawful ceremony. You have the surest
pledge for this—the only pledge on which a man of
sense relies. It is my interest to marry Miss Layton.

“Layton, `there is a time for all things,'—you see
I remember a few of the pious lessons conned in my
childhood; I have given enough of life to transient
liaisons; you understand me Layton? and having
decided to marry, what think you of showing to the
world, a wife, young, lovely, and beautiful? an
Emilie Layton? Layton is a name well known in
the West Indies—a proud unsullied name.”

Layton's eye fell from Pedrillo's exulting countenance.
His blood curdled. He asked faintly,
“where the marriage ceremony was to be performed?”

“On board the ship—we have a Catholic priest,
who is going out to Cuba. He is well known to
the Catholic Bishop, who will solve any doubts you
may entertain. But why any doubts? have I not
been willing—willing! most anxious to have the
ceremony performed under your own roof, and in
your auspicious presence. Would I not now—you
know I would, Layton—glory in leading your
daughter to the altar, before the assembled universe?
Have I not been foiled in all my honorable efforts?
Has not my patience been tired, exhausted, and am
I not driven, and by your imbecility, to this last
desperate resource?

“Take courage, man—it may seem bad, but it
is not so. I promise you a letter from the Narrows,
signed by Emilie's own hand, attesting that the

priest has done his duty, and that I have provided
every luxury for her that love could devise, or money
purchase. My man, Denis, has already taken my
orders to an all-knowing French woman to provide
a lady's complete wardrobe. She has a carteblanche
as to expense; and farther, for I would
quiet your paternal qualms—I am not more than
half devil, Layton—there is a plot within a plot, in
this drama of ours. Denis has followed his master's
suit, and has long had a penchant for your
wife's pretty maid, Justine. Love has been kinder
to the man, than to the master. Justine returns his
passion, and but for her old parents, would follow
him to the world's end—such fools are women,
young and old, in their loves. In sympathy with
their tender passion, and to secure Justine's services
for your daughter, I have promised to settle
five hundred dollars on the old people. Justine
has joyfully acceded to my terms. She enters into
all my plans, con amore. She resents my wrongs;
for she thinks—on my soul she does, Layton, that
I have been falsely dealt by. Still drooping, man!
do you any longer doubt my devotion to Miss
Emilie's comfort—and happiness! if she will but
be happy in the way I prescribe?”

Layton was in truth somewhat solaced by these
details, as a man in a dungeon turns to the least
glimmering of light, and he parted from Pedrillo
more tranquilly than he met him, after having arranged
the costumes in which they were to meet;
Emilie in a blue domino, her father in black, and
Pedrillo, (who never forgot the decoration of his
fine person,) in the dress of a Spanish cavalier, with

three white ostrich feathers attached to his hat by a
diamond cross.

The days that intervened till the masquerade were
marked with unqualified misery to Layton. He
rode about the environs of the city like a half-frantic
man, or shut himself within a solitary apartment of
a tavern. He avoided his acquaintance, he shrunk
from every human being; but most of all he dreaded
to encounter his wronged child, and his noble benefactress,
whose trust he had so basely betrayed.
`But for that last fatal loss,' he said and repeated
to himself, `I would confess all, and abide the consequences.'
And he honestly thought so. Men
often fancy, if circumstances were a little differently
moulded, they should have the courage to do right.
`If it were I alone,' thought Layton, `that had to
meet ruin—but it is not—Emilie—all my children
must suffer with me, all must suffer remediless ruin!
And yet to be a party in this plot against my child
—I—her father, her natural guardian! But, after
all, if it be a plot, it is to effect an object to which
she once assented—which I have avowed—which
the world has approved, which mothers and daughters
have envied. Life is a lottery, Emilie might
marry Marion; but what does he promise more
than I did, when her mother stood exulting with
me at the altar? The poor child must endure a
little disappointment, a little misery—yes, misery it
must be! and she may return to us rid of this wretch,
and with countless wealth—but if she dies of a
broken heart!—well, well, I am too far in to
escape. That horrible violation of Miss Clarence's
trust, I must make her believe I paid the money to

Pedrillo, he will not be here to contradict it; he
must be loaded with the obloquy of the whole business.
Emilie's husband! but his love, his disappointment,
and his Spanish nature will be reckoned
in his favor.'

Thus reasoning and confuting his own reasonings,
thus vainly endeavouring to stifle a voice that
is never stifled, Layton passed the interval till Monday
evening.