has forgotten them; they fade out of this very record when ye turn the
page; no influence, no bearing have they on such future events as may
mark what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands and
gazes into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as if
living still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down: the false smiles
flicker away from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on their
aspects,--they sink, they shrivel, they dissolve!




CHAPTER V.

The wreck cast back from Charybdis.

/Souviens-toi de to Gabrielle/.

Guy Darrell turned hurriedly from the large house in the great square,
and, more and more absorbed in revery, he wandered out of his direct way
homeward, clear and broad though it was, and did not rouse himself till
he felt, as it were, that the air had grown darker; and looking vaguely
round, he saw that he had strayed into a dim maze of lanes and passages.
He paused under one of the rare lamp-posts, gathering up his
recollections of the London he had so long quitted, and doubtful for a
moment or two which turn to take. Just then, up from an alley fronting
him at right angles, came suddenly, warily, a tall, sinewy, ill-boding
tatterdemalion figure, and, seeing Darrell's face under the lamp, halted
abrupt at the mouth of the narrow passage from which it had emerged,
--a dark form filling up the dark aperture. Does that ragged wayfarer
recognize a foe by the imperfect ray of the lamplight? or is he a mere