It was but little after the hour of noon when Edgar Adelon and his companion rode away from the stable-yard at Brandon, and at that time Sir Arthur was seated in a chair before the table, with his head resting on his hand, and his eyes half shut. Painful emotions seemed to be passing through his mind, for the muscles of his face moved, and every now and then he would draw a deep and heavy sigh. Who shall say what was in his thoughts? Did he ponder over a life spent in vanities which had proved worse than ashes; of time misused in planting the seeds of very, very bitter fruit? Did he take that review of the long past, which every one, who has a mind capable of thinking, must sometimes ponder on in moments of silent, sleepless solitude? Did he consider how great wealth and lofty station, and high health and education, and every gift and every advantage which can decorate the fate of man, may be all rendered impotent of good to himself and others, by the pampering of one evil passion, by a devotion to one vanity or folly? Perhaps he did; but if so, if his eyes were keen enough, and his sight unsealed sufficiently to judge of the past justly, he saw that his weaknesses and his faults had been seized upon by a superior intellect, to render him, through their means, subservient to the views and purposes of others whose motives he even yet did not clearly distinguish. "If he did that, he is a scoundrel indeed," said Sir Arthur, in a low murmur. "He is a scoundrel," he added, the next moment; "that is clear: for who but a scoundrel would, for any purpose, suborn evidence against an innocent man?" But as that thought passed through his mind, a look of anguish came upon his countenance, and perhaps he felt that he had been art and part in the deeds he condemned. He might feel, too, that there were purposes, that there were passions, which, in the more vigorous days of life, would have led him, nay, had led him, to deeds little less base, and courses as tortuous as those which he viewed with horror in another. But, at the same time, whichever way he turned his eyes in the wide range of the past, that other was still by his side, encouraging him in all that he now regretted; suggesting the act to his mind, preparing the means to his hand, and, with insidious eloquence, removing the restraints of conscience and of feeling, while they rose up as obstacles to his purpose. He saw that the fiend's own work had been done with him; that his faults and his vices had but been employed to generate more, and to leave his heart in possession of remorse.