own life! I summon you to answer three
questions, before you open your lips again.
Hear them—they are necessary to this interview.
Answer them they are necessary to
ME." He held up one finger of his right hand.
"First question!" he said. " You come here
possessed of information, which may be true, or
may be false—where did you get it?"

"I decline to tell you."

"No matter: I shall find out. If that information
is true—mind I say, with the whole force
of my resolution, if—you are making your market
of it here, by treachery of your own, or by
treachery of some other man. I note that
circumstance, for future use, in my memory which
forgets nothing, and proceed." He held up
another finger. " Second question! Those lines
you invited me to read, are without signature.
Who wrote them?"

"A man whom I have every reason to depend
on; and whom you have every reason to fear."

My answer reached him to some purpose. His
left hand trembled audibly in the drawer.

"How long do you give me," he asked,
putting his third question in a quieter tone,
"before the clock strikes and the seal is broken?"

"Time enough for you to come to my terms,"
I replied.

"Give me a plainer answer, Mr. Hartright.
" What hour is the clock to strike?"

"Nine, to-morrow morning."

"Nine, to-morrow morning? Yes, yes—your
trap is laid for me, before I can get my passport
regulated, and leave London. It is not earlier,
I suppose? We will see about that, presently
I can keep you hostage here, and bargain with
you to send for your letter before I let you go
. In the mean time, be so good, next, as to
mention your terms."

"You shall hear them. They are simple, and
soon stated. You know whose interests I
represent in coming here?"

He smiled with the most supreme composure;
and carelessly waved his right hand.

"I consent to hazard a guess," he said,
jeeringly. " A lady's interests, of course!"

"My Wife's interests."

He looked at me with the first honest expression
that had crossed his face in my presence—
an expression of blank amazement. I could see
that I sank in his estimation, as a dangerous
man, from that moment. He shut up the drawer
at once, folded his arms over his breast, and
listened to me with a smile of satirical attention.

"You are well enough aware," I went on,
" of the course which my inquiries have taken
for many months past, to know that any
attempted denial of plain facts will be quite
useless in my presence. You are guilty of an
infamous conspiracy. And the gin of a fortune
of ten thousand pounds was your motive for
it."

He said nothing. But his face became
overclouded suddenly by a lowering anxiety.

"Keep your gain," I said, (His face lightened
again immediately, and his eyes opened on me
in wider and wider astonishment.) " I am not
here to disgrace myself by bargaining for money
which has passed through your hands, and which
has been the price of a vile crime——"

"Gently, Mr. Hartright. Your moral clap-
traps have an excellent effect in England—keep
them for yourself and your own countrymen, if
you please. The ten thousand pounds was a
legacy left to my excellent wife by the late Mr.
Fairlie. Place the affair on those grounds; and
I will discuss it, if you please. To a man of my
sentiments, however, the subject is deplorably
sordid. I prefer to pass it over. I invite you
to resume the discussion of your terms. What
do you demand?"

"In the first place, I demand a full confession
of the conspiracy, written and signed in
my presence, by yourself."

He raised his finger again. " One!" he said,
checking me off with the steady attention of a
practical man.

"In the second place, I demand a plain proof,
which does not depend on your personal
asseveration, of the date at which my wife left
Blackwater Park, and travelled to London."

"So! so! you can lay your finger, I see, on
the weak place," he remarked, composedly.
" Any more?"

"At present, no more."

"Good! You have mentioned your terms;
now listen to mine. The responsibility to
myself of admitting, what you are pleased to call
the 'conspiracy,' is less, perhaps, upon the whole,
than the responsibility of laying you dead on
that hearth-rug. Let us say that I meet your
proposal—on my own conditions. The statement
you demand of me shall be written; and
the plain proof shall be produced. You call a
letter from my late lamented friend, informing
me of the day and hour of his wife's arrival in
London, written, signed, and dated by himself,
a proof, I suppose? I can give you this. I
can also send you to the man of whom I hired
the carriage to fetch my visitor from the railway,
on the day when she arrived—his order-book
may help you to your date, even if his
coachman who drove me proves to be of no use.
These things I can do, and will do, on conditions.
I recite them. First condition! Madame Fosco
and I leave this house, when and how we please,
without interference of any kind, on your part.
Second condition! You wait here, in company
with me, to see my agent, who is coining at
seven o'clock in the morning to regulate my
affairs. You give my agent a written order to
the man who has got your sealed letter to resign
his possession of it. You wait here till my
agent places that letter unopened in my hands;
and you then allow me one clear half-hour to
leave the house—after which you resume your
own freedom of action, and go where you please.
Third condition! You give me the satisfaction
of a gentleman, for your intrusion into my private
affairs, and for the language you have allowed
yourself to use to me, at this conference. The
time and place, abroad, to be fixed in a letter
from my hand whn I am safe on the Continent;