few days.

'After Adéle's departure, I again fastened up the door of communication,
and although I saw him at least once every day, to some extent I carried
out my determination of ceasing to be on such intimate terms with Mr.
Livermore. I fell back into my former course of life, and yet I felt a
certain envy of the colossal fortune upon which he had, as it were,
stumbled. Though I sincerely wished my poor sick neighbor might succeed
in his enterprise, I gradually grew restless and morose. The opal-mine
became a painful and distasteful topic of conversation, and as Arthur
invariably adverted to it in some way or other, I by degrees made my
visits of shorter and shorter duration.

'In vain I strove to divert my mind from this one absorbing idea. I
visited the theatres, attended cock-pits and bull-fights, in the hope
that the excitement would afford me relief from the fascinating spell:
but it was useless, I was a haunted man.

'One night, returning from the opera, at about ten o'clock, I was
stopped by a large crowd at the corner of the Calle Plateros. From an
officer near me, I ascertained that a foreigner, believed to be a
heretic, had been stabbed, and was either dead or dying.

'The next morning, in the _Diario de Gobierno_, which Donna Teresa
brought up with my chocolate, I learned that 'at about ten on the
previous night, an American, named Percival, recently arrived from
New-Orleans, was murdered in the Calle Plateros.' His watch and purse
were missing; it was therefore inferred that robbery and not revenge had
prompted the foul deed.