. And, perceiving that he hoped,
by dint of proofs of devotion and self-denial, he should contrive to
make her overlook his age and ugliness, she amused herself with telling
him that, if she ever could love him, how excessive that love would be.
With this Jacques Ferrand's reason wandered, and he would frequently
walk in his garden at night absorbed in his own reflections. Sometimes
he gazed for hours into the bedroom of the creole; for she had allowed a
small window to be made in the door, which she frequently and
intentionally left open. Absorbed, lost, wandering, indifferent to his
most important interests, or the preservation of his reputation as an
austere, serious, and pious man,--a reputation usurped, it is true, but,
at the same time, acquired after long years of dissimulation and
chicanery,--he amazed his clerks by his aberration of mind, offended his
clients by his refusals to receive them, and abruptly refused the visits
of the priests, who, deceived by his hypocrisy, had been until then his
warmest champions.

We have said that Cecily was dressing her head before her glass. At a
slight noise in the corridor she turned her head towards the door. In
spite of the noise she had heard, Cecily continued her night toilet
tranquilly. She drew from her corsage, where it was placed almost like a
busk, a stiletto five or six inches long, enclosed in a case of black
shagreen, having a small ebony handle, with silver threads,--a plain
handle, but very fit for use; it was not a mere weapon for show. Cecily
took the dagger from its scabbard with excessive precaution, and laid it
on the marble mantelpiece. The blade, of finest temper and Damascus
steel, was triangular, with keen edges; and the point, as sharp as a
needle, would have pierced a shilling without turning the edge.
Impregnated with a subtle and rapid poison, the slightest puncture of
this poniard was mortal. Jacques Ferrand having one day alluded to the
danger of this weapon, the creole made in his presence an experiment,
_in anima vita_,--that is to say, on the unfortunate house-dog, which,
slightly pricked on the nose, fell and died in horrible convulsions. The
stiletto placed on the mantelpiece, Cecily took off her black bodice,
and was then, with her shoulders, neck, and arms denuded, like a lady in
her ball-dress. Like most of the creole women, she wore, instead of
stays, another bodice of stout linen, which fitted her figure very
closely; her orange-colour