and even recoiled mechanically, and caught my hand.

Sensitiveness, however, was not his fault: he made a kind of stiff nod as
I mumbled an introduction; and seating himself unasked, began at once to
chat in that odd, off-hand, and sneering style, in which he excelled, and
which had, as he wielded it, a sort of fascination of which I can pretend
to convey no idea.

My wife's alarm subsided, and although she still manifestly felt some
sort of misgiving about our visitor, she yet listened to his
conversation, and, spite of herself, soon began to enjoy it. He stayed
for nearly half an hour. But although he glanced at a great variety of
topics, he did not approach the subject of religion. As soon as he was
gone, my wife delivered judgment upon him in form. She admitted he was
agreeable; but then he was such an unnatural, awful-looking object: there
was, besides, something indescribably frightful, she thought, in his
manner--the very tone of his voice was strange and hateful; and, on the
whole, she felt unutterably relieved at his departure.

A few days after, on my return, I found my poor little wife agitated and
dispirited. Mr. Smith had paid her a visit, and brought with him a book,
which he stated he had been reading, and which contained some references
to the Bible which he begged of her to explain in that profounder and
less obvious sense in which they had been cited. This she had endeavoured
to do; and affecting to be much gratified by her satisfactory exposition,
he had requested her to reconcile some discrepancies which he said had
often troubled him when reading the Scriptures. Some of them were quite
new to my good little wife; they startled and even horrified her. He
pursued this theme, still pretending only to seek for information to
quiet his own doubts, while in reality he was sowing in her mind the