reply that they really did. I never saw him
irate except when David was still sceptical, but then he would say quite
warningly "He says it is true, so it must be true." This brings me to
that one of his qualities, which at once gratified and pained me, his
admiration for myself. His eyes, which at times had a rim of red, were
ever fixed upon me fondly except perhaps when I told him of Porthos and
said that death alone could have kept him so long from my side. Then
Paterson's sympathy was such that he had to look away. He was shy of
speaking of himself so I asked him no personal questions, but concluded
that his upbringing must have been lonely, to account for his ignorance
of affairs, and loveless, else how could he have felt such a drawing to
me?

I remember very well the day when the strange, and surely monstrous,
suspicion first made my head tingle. We had been blown, the three of
us, to my rooms by a gust of rain; it was also, I think, the first time
Paterson had entered them. "Take the sofa, Mr. Paterson," I said, as
I drew a chair nearer to the fire, and for the moment my eyes were off
him. Then I saw that, before sitting down on the sofa, he was spreading
the day's paper over it. "Whatever makes you do that?" I asked, and he
started like one bewildered by the question, then went white and pushed
the paper aside.

David had noticed nothing, but I was strangely uncomfortable, and,
despite my efforts at talk, often lapsed into silence, to be roused from
it by a feeling that Paterson was looking at me covertly. Pooh! what
vapours of the imagination were these. I blew them from me, and to prove
to myself, so to speak, that they were dissipated, I asked him to
see David home. As soon as I was alone, I flung me down on the floor
laughing, then as quickly jumped up and was after them, and very sober
too, for it was come to me abruptly as an odd thing that Paterson had
set off without asking where David lived.

Seeing them in front of me, I crossed the street and followed. They were
walking side by side rather solemnly, and perhaps nothing remarkable
happened until they reached David's door. I say perhaps, for something
did occur. A lady, who has several pretty reasons for frequenting the
Gardens, recognised David in the street, and was stooping to address
him, when Paterson did something that alarmed her. I was too far off
to see what it was, but had he growled "Hands off!" she could not have
scurried away more preci