"I have no memory of such a person. Yes, my lord, I was in Venice forty years ago as a travelling secretary to Mr. Topsparkle. We were both young men in those days, and I was more of a student than I have ever been since that time. The world soon drew me from the study of science; but at three-and-twenty I was full of enthusiasm, hoped to discover the philosopher's stone, to make myself as powerful as Dr. Faustus. Idle dreams, my lord. The world is wiser nowadays. I am told that Sir Richard Steele was the last person who ever cultivated the necromantic arts in England, and that he set up his laboratory at Islington. But even he learnt to laugh at his own delusions." "But there are more practical studies for the chemist than the arts of Paracelsus or the Geber Arabs," said Lavendale lightly. "My informant told me that you had the repute of being a great toxicologist." Fétis looked at the speaker intently, but did not answer for the moment. He seemed sunk in a reverie. "Borromeo," he muttered to himself; "I know no such name." "Fétis, the deal is yours," cried Mr. Spencer, and Fétis took the cards with a mechanical air, and went on with the game. Lavendale was satisfied. He had gone far enough for a first attack, and he had seen enough in the manner and expression of the man to assure him that Vincenti's story was true. "And the woman I love is married to a secret assassin!" he thought despairingly, "and when I might have plucked her out of that hell yonder, I drew back and left her there at peril of her life! If he was capable of murdering that early victim of his forty years ago, at what crime would he stop now, hardened and emboldened by a long life of wickedness? She has but to go a step too far--provoke his jealousy beyond endurance--and Mr. Fétis and his black art may be invoked again. Fool that I was to leave her in his power, and yet--" And yet he felt that the alternative might have been worse--to ally her to a fast vanishing life, to leave her with a dishonoured name, ruined in worldly circumstance, widowed in heart without a widow's title of honour, desolate, unpitied, to wander about the Continent in fourth-rate society--an outcast--as the Duke of Wharton was wandering now. No, that would have been a moral murder, worse than the hazard of Topsparkle's revenge. Again, there was always this to be considered--that, although a nameless foreign mistress might be murdered almost with impunity, it would be a very perilous matter to make away with an English lady of rank. "No, she is safe," reflected Lavendale, "and if she is unhappy she wears her rue with a difference--everybody thinks her the gayest and luckiest of women. I will not waste my pity upon her." Before the entertainment was over, his lordship and Mr. Fétis were on the friendliest terms.