without a qualm, but threats of annihilation instead, and found him unarmed but for that very knife which Rattray had induced me to hand over to him in town. I had a grim satisfaction in depriving him of this, and but small compunction in turning my back upon his pain.
“Come,” I said to poor Eva, “don’t pity him, though I daresay he’s the most pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I’ll follow with this lamp.”
One was burning on the old oak table. I carried it along a narrow passage,
intentionally to betray such anxiety. Vanity was also in the impulse. A vulgar newspaper prominence had been my final (and very genuine) tribulation; but to please and to interest one so pleasing and so interesting to me, was another and a subtler thing. And then there was his sympathy - shall I add his admiration? - for my reward.