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and the remembrance of her desolate condition. But contempt alone predominated; I felt utter scorn for them both; and spurning my prostrate enemy with my foot, as unworthy of me, I left them both without another word.
    I walked home quietly enough—my rage was too deep for any outward demonstration. All ideas of Hawthorne’s pretensions to infernal knowledge—for such it really amounted to— were lost sight of in the jealousy I felt in the discovery of Fanny’s duplicity. I could not help brooding over it; for like most men of ordinary sluggish temper, when once aroused, my passions were both deep and permanent. My dislike to Hawthorne had been scarcely augmented by the late event. Fanny seemed to be in my eyes the most guilty of the two; perhaps the thrashing I had inflicted upon my apparently successful rival before Miss Berrimore’s face had something to do with the almost pitying contempt I now felt for him.
    The next morning I was on my way back to Devonshire, and moodily sulked there for about three months. Then, as the spring was dawning upon the earth, I took a fresh resolution, and returned once more to London, determined to drown all saddening reminiscences in a burst of dissipation.
    A day or two after my arrival, my wayward steps led me into Grace-street, but I saw nothing of Miss Berrimore; again and again I loitered about there and the old place in Farringdon street, but she never came. Thinking that she must have changed her place of abode, I one day knocked at the door, and enquired for her. The same servant that formerly lived there answered my knock; and in reply to my enquiry for Miss Berrimore, stared at me amazedly.
    “Did you not know, sir; I thought that she was a friend of yours.”
    “Know! Know what?”
    “She is dead.”
    “Dead!” and the sharp pang that I felt told me how well I must have loved her.
    “When did she die?”
    “Just about a month ago, sir. She caught a cold one day; and after being ill for about a fortnight, she was suddenly taken worse, and died.”
    “Was there anybody with her—any of her friends?”
    “No, sir, I don’t think anybody came near her until just before she was taken worse; and then a tall gentleman came here, and used to enquire how she was nearly every day.”
    “Tall with dark eyes and hair?”
    “Yes, sir; and asked me if I had seen you lately—if you had been to call on Miss Berrimore, that’s to say.”
    “Did he see her?”
    “Not while she was alive; but after she was dead he went with the doctor, and he seemed very much cut up; and afterwards, in the evening, he came again before she was screwed down in her coffin.”
    I left the street after getting all the information I could from the woman. Hawthorne, then, had dared to come back, and death had stepped in and robbed him of his prey. But what was the meaning of his visiting the dead body? and a horrible fear struck chill to my heart. I went to Kensal Green Cemetery, where she was buried, and finding but a very plain and simple stone, had a pretty and ornamental tomb erected, for in her grave I had buried all animosity that I had harbored against her.
    Three months dragged slowly on. I was an aimless, moody man, praying to meet my enemy, but finding him not; nor could I gain any information of his whereabouts. I one day fancied that I saw him at a distance, but could not come up with him in time to be certain.
    About a week afterwards I was leaning moodily over the parapet of London Bridge one night. The hour was late, and the streets almost deserted; the night was dark and cloudy; occasional squalls of drifting rain came up the river. I stood there for some time looking at the lights of the town and the shipping, at the dark water running beneath my feet, listening to the chiming of the clocks, and weakly giving way to melancholy and despondent feelings. I was perfectly sober, and my brain clear. A solitary policeman was watching me a short distance away, as though he thought that I