At last the unhappy man, having regained some control over the emotions that convulsed him, and heaving a profound sigh as though from the bottom of his soul, turned once more, and exhibited to the young lawyer a countenance from which every vestige of color had departed, and in whose dull and leaden eyes and pinched and shrivelled features it was well-nigh impossible to recognize the genteel and complacent host of a few moments before. "You have," said he, in hollow tones, "just delivered to me my death-warrant. In how dreadful a form it was served upon me, you yourself have beheld. My sins have overtaken me, as my poor brother's have overtaken him. They may perhaps have been of an unusually heinous character; but how great is my punishment! I call upon you to declare, even if our hands were ensanguined with the blood of a prince of India, and if the spouse of an Oriental king were executed at our commands, and even if we were partakers in our reward as in our crime, is not the fate that has overtaken us altogether too enormous for our deserts?" "As to that," cried Griscombe, "Heaven is your judge, and not I. As for me, I begin to perceive a glimmer of light through these mysteries that have been gathering about me during these last few days, and I declare to you that I will have no more concern either in you or in your secrets. How is it possible," he exclaimed, "that I have come to be the partaker in the consequences of that rapine and of murder in which you and your brother were doubtless one time so guilty? No: I will have no more to do with you!" "And would you," cried the other, "desert me in such extremity as this? Then at least have some pity upon my innocent daughter. We live a life in this place without a friend or an intimate,--almost, I may say, without an acquaintance. To whom am I to confide her in a time of such mortal danger as this? Am I to take her with me in my flight? And what if my fate overtakes me upon such a journey,--what, then, would become of her?" Upon this plea Griscombe stood for awhile with downcast eyes, every shadow of expression banished from his countenance. As with an inner vision he beheld Miss Desmond as he had seen her but a little while before,--innocent, beautiful, radiantly unconscious of the doom that was about to fall upon the house--and his heart was wrung at the thought of such hideous misfortunes falling upon her sinless life. "Sir," he said at last, "your appeal has reached me. What is it you would have me to do? For your daughter's sake I will assist you in so far as my abilities may extend."