Meantime his conductor, having lit a quantity of wax candles upon the mantel-shelf, and having laid aside the mask that for all this while had concealed his identity, turned at last to our hero a face whose lineaments, though extremely handsome, were as pale as wax and furrowed with the lines of a most consuming care. A quantity of hair as black as ebony curled about his alabaster forehead, and he fixed upon his visitor a pair of large and sombre eyes whose piercing brilliancy betrayed an illimitable anxiety of soul. Beautiful, however, as was the countenance presented to the observer, there was in the hardness of its lines and the thin and compressed nervousness of the lips a stern relentlessness of expression that the smouldering and sinister fire which glowed in the eyes alone might be needed to enflame into a conflagration of rage and of cruelty. Having motioned Griscombe to a soft and luxuriant seat upon the other side of the fire, himself leaning with an elegant ease against the mantel-shelf, this strange and singular being composed himself as though with a considerable effort, and addressed to his listener the following extraordinary discourse, without any preface whatever:-- "You will doubtless be considerably surprised," he said, "to learn that you behold before you one who feels well assured that he is already condemned to an unknown death that shall visit him perhaps within the course of a day or two--perhaps within the course of a few hours. I know perfectly well that you may be inclined even to doubt the truth of so extraordinary a statement or to question the entire sanity of one who propounds so startling a statement. Nor can I even enter into such an account of my miserable circumstances as shall convince you at once of my truthfulness and of my sanity, without involving you also in the danger in which I lie entrapped. Should you be the recipient of my confidence, certain death would probably await you, as I believe it awaits me; and you would thus be prevented from carrying out the important commission that I am now about to impose upon you."