“For heaven’s sake, what are you doing?” was his first salutation from his wife. “How dare you behave as you do? You’you?” He saw at once that she believed in his guilt, and designed to caution him against overacting his part. A great transformation had taken place in Pepperill. Now that he had done the deed, all dread of the consequences seemed to have been swept away; he must assume an innocent part, look people full in the face, and resent suspicion as an insult. The fact that he had come in for a handsome legacy assisted him to shake off the consciousness of guilt. He was now a man worth three or four thousand pounds, and when the assurance was paid he would be worth an additional thousand. What could be proved against him? Nothing. Suspicion might be entertained, but what was suspicion when it had nothing substantial as a basis? “Give me a jug of cider,” he commanded, and Zerah hastened to obey. She put a tumbler on the table beside the jug. Pasco leisurely poured out a glass, and held it up between himself and the light, and was pleased to observe how steady his hand was. “Zerah! come and look here. There is rope in the liquor’it is turning sour.” Kate looked fixedly at her uncle’s face. The child was in distress and doubt. Was her father alive, or had he died a death of the worst description? Was he away on his business, carrying out some risky speculation, or did his bones lie resolved to ash in the great cinder-heap that had smouldered on so long, and was but just extinct? She had not met with anything in her uncle’s character which would justify her in attributing to him so deliberate and desperate a crime as firing his own warehouse, and sacrificing, intentionally or accidentally, the life of his brother-in-law; and yet his wife, who ought to know him best, had arrived at the worst conclusion, and though she said nothing, Kate saw by her manner that she was for ever estranged from her husband, and regarded him as guilty of the crime in its worst form. Zerah had retained Kitty in her room, and had more than once said to her that after the return of Pasco she would make him occupy Kate’s old attic; she would no longer treat Pasco other than as a stranger. Her reception of him now showed repugnance and restraint; the shrinking of an upright nature from one tainted with dishonesty, and exhibiting restraint from saying all that was felt. Kate looked on her uncle with his self-satisfied expression, holding the glass between him and the light with a steady hand, concerning his mind about the ropiness of the cider, and in her simple mind, ignorant of evil, direct, with no trickiness or dissimulation in it, she felt vast relief. She could not believe that Pasco had done wrong, nor that he had any misgivings as to the well-being of her father. She drew a long sigh, and passed her hand across her brow, as though to brush away the cloud that had hung over it and darkened all her thoughts.