"To be sure. And pray do you happen to remember a certain young lady, an heiress, who came to the Abbey last winter, and who was the living image of my poor Margharita--whom you must remember I indulged and treated with all possible kindness so long as she was faithful to me--and on whose account you might therefore spare me your reproaches." "I cannot forget my crime, nor who prompted it." "Plague take you, Fétis, why use hard words? 'Twas but a sleeping draught made a thought too powerful, so that the sleep became eternal. 'Twas euthanasia. Had that girl lived her fate would have been an evil one. She was on the downward slope when death stopped her. She had ceased to care for me, and was passionately in love with Churchill. Do you suppose he would have remained true to her when the vanity of conquest was over and her monotony of sweetness began to pall? Deserted by him, she would have fallen a prey to some coarser profligate, and then the side boxes, and the hospital or Bridewell. Faithless to me, there was nothing but death that could save her." "You might have made her your wife." "Because I found her false and fickle as a mistress! A pretty reason, quotha." "To be made an honest woman would have steadied her; you might have given her the company of her child; that is ever a mother's safeguard." "Pollute my house with the presence of a squalling baby! No, Fétis, endurance has limits. Pshaw! let us not harp upon this folly. Do you remember Mrs. Bosworth?" "Yes; I saw her only at a distance. The likeness was certainly startling." "And you did not know that the lady is now Mr. Durnford's wife? He stole her from her father's house t'other day, and Parson Keith married them." "No; I had not heard that." "And therefore could not guess that the ghost you saw in the dark room was no less a personage than Durnford's young wife, who by a freak of nature happens to be the living image of my dead mistress?" "By heaven, it might have been so! I never guessed--I never thought--" faltered Fétis. "Of course not. You have lost your head, my friend, since you took to cards and strong waters. Had you been content to drink like a gentleman, these fancies would never have addled your brains. I hope you betrayed yourself no more than by your swooning fit in Lavendale's presence. You held your tongue, I trust, when your senses returned?" "I know not," answered Fétis, with an embarrassed air. "I left the house like a sleepwalker, scarce conscious of my own actions; nor do I know how I reached my own chamber."