low-burning eyes upon me as he said this, and waited
for an answer. I responded to his words and to the fixity of his gaze by
silence.

'Give me your confidence, and I will serve your turn,' he said again.
'Are you the guilty man?'

'I? No.'

'Signor Calvotti,' he began again, after another pause, during which his
eyes were shadowed by his drooping brows, 'you shall trust me yet.
Any secret suspicion given to me is buried in the grave. Any secret
certainty of knowledge is buried equally. A confession of your own
guilt, the declaration of a friend's, shall be entombed here'--he laid
his hand upon his breast--'and know no resurrection.'

I answered nothing, and he rose to go.

'That which you hide,' he said as a last word,' I will discover for
myself. Given freely, it would be used for your own cause. Wrested from
mystery, it shall be used for mine.'

'Come here again,' I answered, 'three hours later, and I will answer you
in one way or the other.'

'Good,' he responded, and signalled for the door to be opened. Ratuzzi
himself answered the loud knock he gave, and my friendly gaoler asked me
how I fared, and if I stood in need of anything.

'Nothing just now but time to think a little.'

He closed the door, and locked and chained and bolted it, and then I
heard the footsteps of the two grow fainter and fainter until silence
came. Then I lit my pipe and poured out a glass of wine--for in these
respects I am allowed what I choose--and sat down to think. But I found
it hard to give my thoughts to anything. There was a hollow somewhere
in my mind into which all serious thoughts fell jumbled. I felt neither
pained nor confused, but only vacuous. I battled with this feeling until
I subdued it. Then I grasped the situation firmly. What object have I,
here and now, and everywhere and always, next to the rectitude of my own
soul? There is only one answer to that question: Cecilia's happiness!
How to secure that here?--how to save it from the horrible perils which
everywhere surround it? Is it to be done by securing her union for life
with her brother's murderer? If I know one thing of Arthur Clyde--whom
I know well--it is this: that such a crime as that I charge him with,
committed under whatsoever provocation, will weigh him down for ever,
and make life a perpetual hell to him. The hideous injustice of a union
with such a man she must not suffer, whatsoever else she suffer. And
that she, like the rest of us, _must_ suff