pped it with a heavy sigh. "Ah, poor Dexter!" he
said, pitying himself with the whole sincerity of his egotism. "A warm
heart--wasted in solitude, mocked by deformity. Sad! sad! Ah, poor
Dexter!" He looked round again at Benjamin, with another flash of his
ferocious irony. "A beauteous day, sir," he said, with mock-conventional
courtesy. "Seasonable weather indeed after the late long-continued
rains. Can I offer you any refreshment? Won't you sit down? Retributive
Justice, when it is no taller than you are, looks best in a chair."

"And a monkey looks best in a cage," rejoined Benjamin, enraged at the
satirical reference to his shortness of stature. "I was waiting, sir, to
see you get into your swing."

The retort produced no effect on Miserrimus Dexter: it appeared to have
passed by him unheard. He had changed again; he was thoughtful, he was
subdued; his eyes were fixed on me with a sad and rapt attention. I
took the nearest arm-chair, first casting a glance at Benjamin, which
he immediately understood. He placed himself behind Dexter, at an angle
which commanded a view of my chair. Ariel, silently devouring her cakes,
crouched on a stool at "the Master's" feet, and looked up at him like a
faithful dog. There was an interval of quiet and repose. I was able to
observe Miserrimus Dexter uninterruptedly for the first time since I had
entered the room.

I was not surprised--I was nothing less than alarmed by the change for
the worse in him since we had last met. Mr. Playmore's letter had not
prepared me for the serious deterioration in him which I could now
discern.

His features were pinched and worn; the whole face seemed to have wasted
strangely in substance and size since I had last seen it. The softness
in his eyes was gone. Blood-red veins were intertwined all over them
now: they were set in a piteous and vacant stare. His once firm hands
looked withered; they trembled as they lay on the coverlet. The paleness
of his face (exaggerated, perhaps, by the black velvet jacket that
he wore) had a sodden and sickly look--the fine outline was gone. The
multitudinous little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened.
His head sank into his shoulders when he leaned forward in his chair.
Years appeared to have passed over him, instead of months, while I
had been absent from England. Remembering the medical report which
Mr. Playmore had given me to read--recalling the doctor's positively
declared opinion that the pres