"Well, both. I cannot make him out; he
is so confoundedly cool, and so infernally sharp.
He might be a shrewd man of business, bent on
making a fortune, and a good way on the road
to his object; and yet he's nothing but a man of
pleasure, of what your good people would call a
wretched low kind of pleasure too, and is spending
the fortune instead."

"I don't think so, Stewart," his wife said,
quietly and impressively. "I don't think Mr.
Deane is spending any very considerable
portion of his fortune, whatever it may be."

Stewart had resumed his walking up and
down, but listened to her attentively.

"I regard him as a curious combination of
the man of business with the man of pleasure.
I don't know that we have ever met exactly the
kind of person before. He is as calculating in
his pleasures as other men are in their
business."

"I hate the man," said Routh, with an angry
frown and a sullen gesture.

"That's dangerous, Stewart," said Harriet.
"You should not allow yourself either to hate
or to like any one in whom you are speculating.
If you do the one, it will make you incautious;
if you do the other, scrupulous. Both are
unwise. I do not hate Mr. Deane."

"Fortunately for him, Harry. I think a man
would be a great deal safer with my hatred than
with yours."

"Possibly," she said, simply, and the slightest
smile just parted her crimson lips, and
showed a momentary gleam of her white, small,
even teeth. "But I do not hate him. I think
about him, though; because it is necessary that
I should, and I fancy I have found out what he
really is."

"Have you, by Jove?" interrupted Routh.
"Then you've done a clever thing, Harriet—
clever even for you; for of all the close and
impenetrable men I ever met, Deane's the
closest and the hardest. When I'm with him,
I always feel as if he were trying to do me
somehow, and as if he would succeed too,
though that's not easy. He's as mean as a
Scotch shopkeeper, as covetous as a Jew, as
wide awake as a Yankee. There's a coolness
and a constant air of avowed suspicion about
him that drives me mad."

"And yet you ought to have been done with
temper and with squeamishness long ago," said
Harriet, in a tone of quiet conviction. "How
often have you told me, Stewart, that to us, in
our way of life, every man must be a puppet,
prized in proportion to the readiness with which
he dances to our pulling? What should we
care? I am rendered anxious and uneasy by
what you say."

She kept silence for a few moments, and then
asked him, in a changed tone,

"How does your account with him stand?"

"My account!—ah, there's the rub! He's
so uncommonly sharp, that there's little to be
done with him. The fellow's a blackguard—
more of a blackguard than I am, I'll swear,
and as much of a swindler, at least, in his
capacity for swindling. Only I dare say he has
never had occasion to reduce it to practice.
And yet there's a hardly veiled insolence in his
manner to me, at times, for which I'd like to
blow his brains out. He tells me, as plainly as
if he said it in words, that he pays me a
commission on his pleasures, such as are of my
procuring, but that he knows to a penny what
he intends to pay, and is not to be drawn into
paying a penny more."

Harriet sat thoughtful, and the faintest flush
just flickered on her cheek. "Who are his
associates, when he is not with you?"

"He keeps that as close as he keeps everything
else," replied Routh; "but I have no doubt
he makes them come cheap, if indeed he does
not get a profit out of them."

"You are taking my view of him, Stewart,"
said Harriet; then she added, "He has some
motive for acting with such caution, no doubt;
but a flaw may be found in his armour, when
we think fit to look for it. In the mean time,
tell me what has set you thinking of him?"

"Dallas's affair, Harriet. I am sorry the
poor fellow lost his money to him. Hang it,
I'm such a bad fellow myself, so utterly gone
a 'coon" (his wife winced, and her pale face
turned paler), "that it comes ill from me to say
so, and I wouldn't, except to you. But I am
devilish sorry Deane got the chance of cleaning
Dallas out. I like the boy; he's a stupid fool,
but not half bad, and he didn't deserve such an
ill turn of fortune."

"Well," said Harriet, "take comfort in
remembering that you helped him."

She spoke very coldly, and evidently was a
stranger to the feelings which actuated Routh.

"You don't care about it, that's clear," he
remarked.

He was standing still now, leaning against
the mantelpiece. She rose and approached
him.

"No, Stewart," she said, in her calm sweet
voice, which rose a little as she went on, "I
do not. I care for nothing on earth (and I
never look beyond this earth) but you. I have
no interest, no solicitude, for any other creature.
I cannot feel any, and it is well. Nothing but
this would do in my case."

She stood and looked at him with her deep
blue eyes, with her hands folded before her, and
with a sober seriousness in her face confirmatory
of the words she had spoken. He looked at her
until she turned away, and a keen observer
might have seen in his face the very slightest
expression of impatience.

"Shall we go into those accounts now?" said
Harriet; "we shall just have time for it, before
you go to Flinders'."

She sat down, as she spoke, before a
well-appointed writing-table, and, drawing a japan
box towards her, opened it, and took out a
number of papers. Routh took a seat beside
her, and they were soon deep in calculations
which would have had little interest or meaning
for a third person, had there been one present.
By degrees, Routh's face darkened, and many