ut I am accountable to man, and
that account I am willing to render. You threatened me in the presence
of my ward; you spoke of cowardice, and hinted at danger. Whatever my
faults, want of courage is not one. Stand by your threats,--I am ready
to brave them!"

"A year, perhaps a short month, ago," replied Maltravers, "and I would
have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand; nay, this very night, had
the hazard of either of our lives been necessary to save Evelyn from
your persecution, I would have incurred all things for her sake! But
that is past; from me you have nothing to fear. The proofs of your
earlier guilt, with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn
me from the solemn responsibility of human vengeance. Great Heaven!
what hand could dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so black with
crime, unatoning, unrepentant, and unprepared, before the judgment-seat
of the ALL JUST? Go, unhappy man! may life long be spared to you! Awake!
awake from this world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of
the next!"

"I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the
conventicle," said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien
that his conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this
wrong world is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not
justify, but the effects of which I, no prophet, could not foresee, were
necessary for success in life. I have been but as all other men have
been who struggle against fortune to be rich and great: ambition must
make use of foul ladders."

"Oh," said Maltravers, earnestly, touched involuntarily, and in spite
of his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that this miserable
attempt at self-justification seemed to denote,--"oh, be warned, while
it is yet time; wrap not yourself in these paltry sophistries; look back
to your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with
those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable
courage--your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked,
path. Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you
time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have
inflicted on the few. I know not why I thus address you: but something
diviner than indignation urges me; something tells me that you are
already on the brink of the abyss!"

Lord Vargrave changed colour, nor did he speak for some moments; then
raising his