recognise my presence. He turned to me, and said, in a tone of
severity,--

"How now? What brings you here?"

This rebuke was unexpected. I stammered out, in reply, that the report
of the pistol had alarmed me, and that I came to discover the cause of
it.

He noticed not my answer, but resumed his perturbed steps, and his
anxious but abstracted looks. Suddenly he checked himself, and, glancing
a furious eye at the corpse, he muttered, "Yes, the die is cast. This
worthless and miserable scene shall last no longer. I will at once get
rid of life and all its humiliations."

Here succeeded a new pause. The course of his thoughts seemed now to
become once more tranquil. Sadness, rather than fury, overspread his
features; and his accent, when he spoke to me, was not faltering, but
solemn.

"Mervyn," said he, "you comprehend not this scene. Your youth and
inexperience make you a stranger to a deceitful and flagitious world.
You know me not. It is time that this ignorance should vanish. The
knowledge of me and of my actions may be of use to you. It may teach you
to avoid the shoals on which my virtue and my peace have been wrecked;
but to the rest of mankind it can be of no use. The ruin of my fame is,
perhaps, irretrievable; but the height of my iniquity need not be known.
I perceive in you a rectitude and firmness worthy to be trusted; promise
me, therefore, that not a syllable of what I tell you shall ever pass
your lips."