In a work of this kind not only the external incidents should be noticed, but also what may be called the mental events. We have seen a calamity produce a great revulsion in the feelings of Colonel Clifford; but as for Robert Bartley his very character was shaken to the foundation by his crime and its terrible consequences. He was now like a man who had glided down a soft sunny slope, and was suddenly arrested at the brink of a fathomless precipice. Bartley was cunning, selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous in reality, so long as he could appear respectable, but he was not violent, nor physically reckless, still less cruel. A deed of blood shocked him as much as it would shock an honest man. Yet now through following his natural bent too far, and yielding to the influence of a remorseless villain, he found his own hands stained with blood--the blood of a man who, after all, had been his best friend, and had led him to fortune; and the blood of an innocent girl who had not only been his pecuniary benefactress for a time, but had warmed and lighted his house with her beauty and affection. Busy men, whose views are all external, are even more apt than others to miss the knowledge of their own minds. This man, to whom everything was business, had taken for granted he did not actually love Grace Hope. Why, she was another man's child. But now he had lost her forever, he found he had mistaken his own feelings. He looked round his gloomy horizon and realized too late that he did love her; it was not a great and penetrating love like William Hope's; he was incapable of such a sentiment; but what affection he had to bestow, he had given to this sweet creature. His house was dark without her; he was desolate and alone, and, horrible to think of, the instrument of her assassination. This thought drove him to frenzy, and his frenzy took two forms, furious excitement and gloomy despair; this was now his life by night and day, for sleep deserted him. At the mine his measures were all wise, but his manner very wild; the very miners whispered amongst themselves that he was going mad. At home, on the contrary, he was gloomy, with sullen despair. He was in this latter condition the evening after the explosion, when a visitor was announced. Thinking it was some one from the mine, he said, faintly, "Admit him," and then his despondent head dropped on his breast; indeed, he was in a sort of lethargy, worn out with his labors, his remorse and his sleeplessness. In that condition his ear was suddenly jarred by a hard, metallic voice, whose tone was somehow opposed to all the voices with which goodness and humanity have ever spoken. "Well, governor, here's a slice of luck." Bartley shivered. "Is that the devil speaking to me?" he muttered, without looking up. "No," said Monckton, jauntily, "only one of his servants, and your best friend." "My friend," said Bartley, turning his chair and looking at him with a sort of dull wonder.