"'Twould have been a worse murder to slay her honour, as you would have done. She is safe enough with her wicked old husband, guarded and fenced round by society. Lady Judith is a personage. Topsparkle trembles at her frown." "Yes, as the devils are said to tremble before the Eternal; but his heart may rebel against her all the same, torn by jealous fury. To know himself old, effete, a mere simulacrum of humanity, and to see her surrounded by all the bucks and bloods of the town, idolising and pursuing her: could the infernal powers in Tartarus invent a more horrible agony for a worn-out old profligate? And when once a man has got his hand at poisoning, how easy the art! See how often my Lord This or my Lady That is hustled into the family vault after a three days' illness--a fever, a putrid sore-throat, the Lord knows what! Two or three doses of arsenic or antimony, and the trick is done. 'Putrid fever,' says the physician. 'Your house is unhealthy, Mr. Topsparkle. I have heard your first wife died of the same kind of malady. You should move further to the West; the new houses in Cavendish Square are almost in the country. Here you are too near to Newgate and the Compter. The foul odours of the gaol-birds are blown in at your windows by every east wind.' Do you think Lady Judith's untimely death would be more than a nine days' wonder, happen when it might?" "I think you should concern yourself less about her, dear Jack, for your own peace of mind." "That was shattered long ago, friend. It is gone irrevocably, shivered, smashed, annihilated, like that glass goblet which was once the luck of Eden Hall. O, that Topsparkle is a damned villain! Could I but see him and his accomplice at the Old Bailey, I would answer the dread summons cheerfully. But to die and leave those two behind, and to leave her in their power!" "God grant that you may outlive those ancient sinners." "God will not grant it, Herrick. My days are numbered, like the beads upon a rosary--I am telling them off bead by bead--'tis but a short string." "Dear Jack, if thou would'st consult a physician instead of talking this wild nonsense, and if thou would'st but take care of thyself--" "I might live to be ninety--on ass's milk--like Hervey. Open another bottle of Burgundy, Herrick, we are too much in the dismals." "You shall have no more to-night." "Shall I not, Mentor? Then I will go to bed and dream I am in Mahomet's paradise, where lovely woman intoxicates instead of wine." CHAPTER VI. "WHEN SCREECH-OWLS CROAK UPON THE CHIMNEY-TOPS."