*

As I arose from that bed I knew that I was changed. It was a secret
thought, a secret that I have kept till now. I was not quite sure at
first, but it thus fell out that I knew it well:

One day William and I had been sitting for some time in the library, he
reading and I looking at the faces that glowed in the red-hot coal, and
thinking of Lucy and him.

'Where is Lucy?' said I, at length,

'Gone out into the village,' he answered, without looking from the book;
'first to buy gloves, then to see Miss Trip, the dancing mistress, who
is ill, then to Hurst Park to tea, whence I am to fetch her at nine
o'clock.'

'You seem to know all her movements,' I said, with a sneer.

'Certainly, he rejoined, 'she told me all that I have told you.'

'You always _are_ in her confidence,' said I, very angrily, as my blood
rose.

'I believe so,' said he, calmly; though he looked at me with some
surprise.

'And I never,' said I, between my teeth.

'That,' he said, 'is a matter with which I have no concern.'

I ground my teeth, but I kept quiet. I kept quiet, though every nerve in
my body tingled with rage, and my boiling blood rushed into my eyes till
I could hardly see. 'Do you know,' I shouted, 'do you know that I love
her--would die a thousand deaths for her?'

He clasped his hands with a quick motion, as he said in a low voice,
'And so do I; and so would I.'

'Beast, fiend!' I screamed, 'does she--does she----' I could not get out
the accursed words.

'We have been engaged,' he answered, divining what I would have asked,
'we have been engaged for some time, and----'

He did not finish the sentence, for I sprang at him, crushed him to the
floor, squeezed his throat till his face grew black and the froth oozed
out from his lips, beat his head upon the hearthstones till he lay still
and bleeding, and then sought my knife. It was up stairs. I flew to get
it. It lay upon my dressing table before the glass, and I snatched at
it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth--not mine, I
swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that
glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!--but a fiend with bloody hands,
and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its
glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had
possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and
turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced _me_
through, and sa