ed
back again to Shakespeare and King Lear. "Goneril and Regan!" he cried.
"My two unnatural daughters, my she-devil children come to mock at me!"

"Nothing of the sort," said my mother-in-law, as quietly as if she were
addressing a perfectly reasonable being. "I am your old friend, Mrs.
Macallan; and I have brought Eustace Macallan's second wife to see you."

The instant she pronounced those last words, "Eustace Macallan's second
wife," the man in the chair sprang out of it with a shrill cry of
horror, as if she had shot him. For one moment we saw a head and body in
the air, absolutely deprived of the lower limbs. The moment after,
the terrible creature touched the floor as lightly as a monkey, on his
hands. The grotesque horror of the scene culminated in his hopping away
on his hands, at a prodigious speed, until he reached the fire-place in
the long room. There he crouched over the dying embers, shuddering and
shivering, and muttering, "Oh, pity me, pity me!" dozens and dozens of
times to himself.

This was the man whose advice I had come to ask--who assistance I had
confidently counted on in my hour of need.

CHAPTER XXV. MISERRIMUS DEXTER--SECOND VIEW

THOROUGHLY disheartened and disgusted, and (if I must honestly confess
it) thoroughly frightened too, I whispered to Mrs. Macallan, "I was
wrong, and you were right. Let us go."

The ears of Miserrimus Dexter must have been as sensitive as the ears of
a dog. He heard me say, "Let us go."

"No!" he called out. "Bring Eustace Macallan's second wife in here. I
am a gentleman--I must apologize to her. I am a student of human
character--I wish to see her."

The whole man appeared to have undergone a complete transformation. He
spoke in the gentlest of voices, and he sighed hysterically when he had
done, like a woman recovering from a burst of tears. Was it reviving
courage or reviving curiosity? When Mrs. Macallan said to me, "The fit
is over now; do you still wish to go away?" I answered, "No; I am ready
to go in."

"Have you recovered your belief in him already?" asked my mother-in-law,
in her mercilessly satirical way.

"I have recovered from my terror of him," I replied.

"I am sorry I terrified you," said the soft voice at the fire-place.
"Some people think I am a little mad at times. You came, I suppose,
at one of the times--if some people are right. I admit that I am a
visionary. My imagination runs away with me, and I say and do strange
things. O