With this salutation, Crauford drew his chair to the table by which Glendower sat, and entered into conversation with his purposed victim. A comely and a pleasing countenance had Richard Crauford! the lonely light of the room fell upon a face which, though forty years of guile had gone over it, was as fair and unwrinkled as a boy’s. Small, well-cut features; a blooming complexion; eyes of the lightest blue; a forehead high, though narrow; and a mouth from which the smile was never absent,--these, joined to a manner at once soft and confident, and an elegant though unaffected study of dress, gave to Crauford a personal appearance well suited to aid the effect of his hypocritical and dissembling mind. “Well, my friend,” said he, “always at your books, eh? Ah! it is a happy taste; would that I had cultivated it more; but we who are condemned to business have little leisure to follow our own inclinations. It is only on Sundays that I have time to read; and then (to say truth) I am an old-fashioned man, whom the gayer part of the world laughs at, and then I am too occupied with the Book of Books to think of any less important study.” Not deeming that a peculiar reply was required to this pious speech, Glendower did not take that advantage of Crauford’s pause which it was evidently intended that he should. With a glance towards the student’s wife, our mercantile friend continued: “I did once--once in my young dreams--intend that whenever I married I would relinquish a profession for which, after all, I am but little calculated. I pictured to myself a country retreat, well stored with books; and having concentrated in one home all the attractions which would have tempted my thoughts abroad, I had designed to surrender myself solely to those studies which, I lament to say, were but ill attended to in my earlier education. But--but” (here Mr. Crauford sighed deeply, and averted his face) “fate willed it otherwise!” Whatever reply of sympathetic admiration or condolence Glendower might have made was interrupted by one of those sudden and overpowering attacks of faintness which had of late seized the delicate and declining health of his wife. He rose, and leaned over her with a fondness and alarm which curled the lip of his visitor. “Thus it is,” said Crauford to himself, “with weak minds, under the influence of habit. The love of lust becomes the love of custom, and the last is as strong as the first.”