t to triumph over remorse; and about the hour of the first
milkman, he returned to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a
horrid expectation, as though it should have burst that instant into
flames; drew out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps,
once more lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a
coffee-shop.

It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke. Dismally searching in his
pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and, when he had paid
the price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to return to the
Superfluous Mansion. He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to the
cupboard where he kept his money. Yet half a minute, he told himself,
and he would be free for days from his obseding lodger, and might decide
at leisure on the course he should pursue. But fate had otherwise
designed: there came a tap at the door and Zero entered.

"Have I caught you?" he cried, with innocent gaiety. "Dear fellow, I was
growing quite impatient." And on the speaker's somewhat stolid face
there came a glow of genuine affection. "I am so long unused to have a
friend," he continued, "that I begin to be afraid I may prove jealous."
And he wrung the hand of his landlord.

Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting. To
reject these kind advances was beyond his strength. That he could not
return cordiality for cordiality was already almost more than he could
carry. That inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous
characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed him to the
ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.

"That is all right," cried Zero--"that is as it should be--say no more!
I had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted me; but I now own that
fear to have been unworthy, and apologise. To doubt of your forgiveness
were to repeat my sin. Come, then; dinner waits; join me again and tell
me your adventures of the night."

Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself once
more to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal
acquaintance. Once more the plotter plunged up to the neck in damaging
disclosures: now it would be the name and biography of an individual,
now the address of some important centre, that rose, as if by accident,
upon his lips; and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to
his unhappy guest. Finally, the course of Zero's bland monologue led him
to the young lad