ould make. It succeeded in enforcing submission from
the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment
quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off
quietly in the carriage before the family breakfast time. The servants
imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a
strict man like their master, who held his head high in the world,
should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him. The
banker's drive of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary
beginning of the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive, Raffles
had recovered his spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there
was the good reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds.
Various motives urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not
himself inquire closely into all of them. As he had stood watching
Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the
man had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not
to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the
fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to
the risks of defying him. But when, freed from his repulsive presence,
Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence
that he had secured more than a respite. It was as if he had had a
loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with their hateful
kindred of sensations--as if on all the pleasant surroundings of his
life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.

Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the
thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of
opinion is threatened with ruin?

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of
uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because she carefully avoided
any allusion to it. He had been used every day to taste the flavor of
supremacy and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty that
he was watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having some
discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to
edification. Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is
often worse than seeing; and his imagination continually heightened the
anguish of an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of
Raffles did not keep t