paced his hall for a little in an agitation which made me like him
better and better. "The cold-blooded villain!" he kept muttering;
"the infernal, foreign, blood-thirsty rascal! Perhaps you were
right; it couldn't have done any good, I know; but - I only wish
he'd lived for us to hang him, Cole! Why, a beast like that is
capable of anything: I wonder if you've told me the worst even now?"
And he stood before me, with candid suspicion in his fine, frank
eyes.

"What makes you say that?" said I, rather nettled.

I shan't tell you if it's going to rile you, old fellow," was his
reply. And with it reappeared the charming youth whom I found it
impossibile to resist. "Heaven knows you have had enough to worry
you!" he added, in his kindly, sympathetic voice.

"So much," said I, "that you cannot add to it, my dear Rattray.
Now, then! Why do you think there was something worse?"

"You hinted as much in town: rightly or wrongly I gathered there
was something you would never speak about to living man."

I turned from him with a groan.

"Ah! but that had nothing to do with Santos."

"Are you sure?" he cried.

"No," I murmured; "it had something to do with him, in a sense; but
don't ask me any more." And I leaned my forehead on the high oak