It was night, and nobody saw him. Few knew him, besides, in these streets of Harliflax. He rushed to his lodgings, and found there were no letters there; then out again, and did not draw breath till he stood in the dark, on the opposite side of the way, looking into the bright moonlight at the house where Amelia Stenhouse slept the untroubled sleep of youth. There he stood in the depth of the night-shadow, looking how the night-radiance and illumination of that weird moon brought out the long, lofty line of terrace, the line of great houses of which Harliflax was proud. The night was so bright, and the air so still, that one slow figure, gliding along there in front of the high, silent houses, was caught and wrapped in a silvery mantle, and drawn along noiselessly, like a pigmy, in the great flood of silent light. So white on that side of the road--so black here where he stood, among the shadows where the devils and lovers of darkness congregate. But, Amelia, which was she? He raised his eyes to the window which he knew was Amelia's, and tried to think of all the glories before him; fortune past counting, youth, love--nothing left out that was worth having, but--But!--that one miserable step out into the light across the blackness of darkness--the step which, God help his miserable brain, he was not about to take, but _had taken_, be the consequences what they might. When he thought of it there, opposite Amelia's window, standing in the darkness, his head swam and his tongue clove to his mouth. He had done it; he was not projecting, nor discussing, nor entertaining his subtle mind with the temptation; the temptation, with all its thrills of intoxicating excitement, its fascinations of fierce and hostile fancy--its wild impulses of passion--was over for ever, and for ever, and for ever!--and the victim, disenchanted, stood cold, looking always into the blanched face of the deed which he had done. And Horace could no longer think of Amelia; not of the delight of marrying, and carrying away, and making his own property of the beauty; not of the boundless wealth he should have to bestow on her one day; not of the thousand a-year which he believed would induce her to marry him immediately, and which for that sole reason, and no other, he had wrung out of Mr. Pouncet. He had pled his cause warmly with herself, and his love had blazed about her not so many days ago when he was at Harliflax; but he could not turn his thoughts to her now; he could not warm his torpid mind with remembering her beauty; he could not rouse his fierce animal passion. Something black and cold stood first in his mind between him and his fortune--between him and what he called happiness. Murder had overshadowed love, and killed it. He had no longer any thoughts to spare save for that horrible hag whom he had taken into his heart!