"I
should recommend you to go and call upon him at his chambers. Never
mind any coolness there may have been between you. You needn't see him,
you know; in fact it will be much better for you to avoid doing so. But
just call and make the inquiry. I am really anxious to know if there is
anything the matter with him."
Sir Reginald Eversleigh looked at the Frenchman with a half doubtful,
half horror-stricken look--such a look as Faust may have cast at
Mephistopheles, when Gretchen's soldier-brother fell, stricken by the
invisible sword of the demon.
"I'll tell you what it is, Victor," he said, after a pause, "unless our
luck changes pretty quickly, I shall throw up the sponge some fine
morning, and blow my brains out. Affairs have been desperate with me
for a long time, and your fine schemes have not made me a halfpenny
richer. I begin to think that, in spite of all your cleverness, you're
no better than a bungler."
"I shall begin to think so myself," answered Victor, between his set
teeth, "unless success comes to us speedily. We have been working
underground, and the work has been slow and wearisome; but the end
cannot be far distant," he added, with a heavy sigh. "Go and inquire
after your cousin's health."
And so Reginald Eversleigh strove to dismiss the subject from his mind.
So powerful is self-deception, that he almost succeeded in persuading
himself that he had no part in Carrington's plots--that he did not know
at what he was aiming and that he was, personally, absolved from any
share in the crime that was being perpetrated, if crime there was; but
that there was, he even affected himself to doubt.
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