He was safe--his children’s good name was safe--he might sit down securely amongst his Lares and Penates, and comment on the shocking number of murders, that were reported in the newspapers, with impunity. Why, then, did his native audacity take that opportunity to desert him, and leave him a prey to his doubts and remorse? During the suspense and fear he had endured, he had never given a thought to anything but his possible danger; he had had no time, as it were, to grieve over the loss of the girl he loved; but, now that the danger was past, he could think of nothing else but Jenny, done to death by his own hand. Had he been a better man, the terrible deed would never have been committed, and, had he been a worse man, he would have sat down at this juncture, congratulating himself that all had ended so well for him, and banished the thought of her thenceforward. But Henry Hindes was neither a villain nor a hero. He was common clay, like the rest of us. And he had loved Jenny Crampton very dearly. He had not realised how much he loved her, nor how much he had longed to possess her, until the fatal truth was revealed to him by her marriage with Frederick Walcheren. He had seen her blossom into a bonny maiden day by day, and knew that her presence pleased and excited him; but he had not dreamt that his affection for her came between him and his duty to Hannah, until her lover came on the scene and she resented all interference between them. _Then_ he realised what his true feeling for his partner’s lovely daughter was; but subsequent events had caused him to think of nothing but the awful risk he ran. But now, the worst was over--the high tension to which his nerves had been strung for the last few days was relaxed--and he had leisure to dwell upon what had occurred, and to recognise what his love for the murdered girl really was, and to feel that he would give his miserable life a thousand times over, if the sacrifice could only bring back hers. He saw her, as well as Hannah, but in a dozen shifting moods. Now, she was flourishing her whip at him, as she drove clattering down the principal street of Hampstead, and then she was laughing at some funny story, or teasing her parents or himself, or pouting her pretty lips because they thwarted her, or thanking him with those lovely eyes of hers for the American candies, or the illustrated papers, or the hot-house flowers, he had brought her from town. But the picture, however fascinating, always changed to give place to that in which she stood at the edge of the cliff on the last day of her young life, defying him with the contemptuous words,--‘I hate you! I hate you!’ He would go through the scene again and again; would hear her mocking voice--see her indignant, flashing eyes--give the fatal push that snuffed out her bright being like the flame of a candle--and then stand gazing at the empty space where she had been but a moment before, and which now was void and silent.