strange wistfulness which in our hours of trouble
the eyes of a dog sympathizingly assume, an odd thought for a sensible
man passed into him, showing, more than pages of sombre elegy, how deep
was the sudden misanthropy that blackened the world around. "When I am
dead," ran that thought, "is there one human being whom I can trust to
take charge of the old man's dogs?"

So, let the scene close!

CHAPTER VI. THE WILL

The next day, or rather the next evening, Sir Miles St. John was seated
before his unshared chicken,--seated alone, and vaguely surprised at
himself, in a large, comfortable room in his old hotel, Hanover Square.
Yes, he had escaped. Hast thou, O Reader, tasted the luxury of escape
from a home where the charm is broken,--where Distrust looks askant from
the Lares? In vain had Dalibard remonstrated, conjured up dangers, and
asked at least to accompany him. Excepting his dogs and his old valet,
who was too like a dog in his fond fidelity to rank amongst bipeds, Sir
Miles did not wish to have about him a single face familiar at Laughton,
Dalibard especially. Lucretia's letter had hinted at plans and designs
in Dalibard. It might be unjust, it might be ungrateful; but he grew
sick at the thought that he was the centre-stone of stratagems and
plots. The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his
eyes; nay, he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if to count
how long before they followed his bier. So, breaking from all roughly,
with a shake of his head and a laconic assertion of business in
London, he got into his carriage,--his own old bachelor's lumbering
travelling-carriage,--and bade the post-boys drive fast, fast! Then,
when he felt alone,--quite alone,--and the gates of the lodge swung
behind him, he rubbed his hands with a schoolboy's glee, and chuckled
aloud, as if he enjoyed, not only the sense, but the fun of his safety;
as if he had done something prodigiously cunning and clever.

So when he saw himself snug in his old, well-remembered hotel, in the
same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and gay, from the breezes of
Weymouth or the brouillards of Paris, he thought he shook hands again
with his youth. Age and lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were
forgotten for the moment. And when, as the excitement died, those grim
spectres came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced
and prepared, standing erect on that hearth for whose hospitality he
paid