probation was revived. But the doom itself, the night-scene of horror
through which I had passed, had utterly vanished from my memory. This
lost recollection, it was the one unending toil of my wandering mind
to recover, and I never got it back. None who have not suffered as I
suffered then, can imagine with what a burning rage of determination I
followed past events in my delirium, one by one, for days and nights
together,--followed, to get to the end which I knew was beyond, but
which I never could see, not even by glimpses, for a moment at a time.

However my visions might alter in their course of succession, they
always began with the night when Mannion returned from the continent
to North Villa. I stood again in the drawing-room; I saw him enter; I
marked the slight confusion of Margaret; and instantly doubted her. I
noticed his unwillingness to meet her eye or mine; I looked on the
sinister stillness of his face; and suspected him. From that moment,
love vanished, and hatred came in its place. I began to watch; to
garner up slight circumstances which confirmed my suspicions; to wait
craftily for the day when I should discover, judge, and punish them
both--the day of disclosure and retribution that never came.

Sometimes, I was again with Mannion, in his house, on the night of the
storm. I detected in every word he spoke an artful lure to trap me
into trusting him as my second father, more than as my friend. I heard
in the tempest sounds which mysteriously interrupted, or mingled
with, my answers, voices supernaturally warning me of my enemy, each
time that I spoke to him. I saw once more the hideous smile of triumph
on his face, as I took leave of him on the doorstep: and saw it, this
time, not as an illusion produced by a flash of lightning, but as a
frightful reality which the lightning disclosed.