Crime is only another name for danger. The criminal stakes
his life. I value my life too highly to hazard it lightly. But if I can
mould accident to my profit, I should be a fool indeed were I to shrink
from doing so. There is one thing I delight in, my dear Reginald, and
that is success! And now tell me why you are here to-night?"
"I cannot tell you that," answered the baronet. "I came hither,
unconscious where I was coming. There seems a strange fatality in this.
I let my horse choose his own road, and he brought me here to this
house--to you, my evil genius."
"Pray, Sir Reginald, be good enough to drop that high tragedy tone,"
said Victor, with supreme coolness. "It is all very well to be
addressed by you as a fiend and an evil genius once in a way; but upon
frequent repetition, that sort of thing becomes tiresome. You have not
told me why you are wandering about the country instead of eating your
dinner in a Christian-like manner at the rectory?"
"Do you not know the reason, Carrington?" asked the baronet, gazing
fixedly at his companion.
"How should I know anything about it?"
"Because to-day's work has been your doing," answered Reginald,
passionately; "because you are mixed up in the dark business of this
day, as you were mixed up in that still darker treachery at Raynham
Castle. I know now why you insisted upon my choosing the horse called
'Niagara' for my cousin Lionel; I know now why you were so interested
in the appearance of that other horse, which had already caused the
death of more than one rider; I know why you are here, and why Lionel
Dale has disappeared in the course of the day.
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