moreover, I trust that if you are my friend, as you seem to wish to be, you will so far respect my memory as not to believe all that will probably be said against me. To you only I admit that I am not what I have represented myself to be—that is all. I accept your kindness, but, alas! with considerable shame.”

I drew the Italian notes from the wallet, and counted them.

“There are twenty-eight thousand lire here,” I remarked, “one thousand one hundred and twenty pounds.”

“What does it concern me how much there is?” he asked, smiling. “Use it as I’ve directed. Indeed,” he added, after a pause, “you need not tell any one that you have it.”

“I shall tell my friend Sampson, or people may think that I’ve stolen it,” I said.

“Yes,” he remarked hoarsely, with a sigh, “people are always ready to think ill of one, are they not?”

And then, as the bar of sunlight crept slowly across the worn-out carpet, a deep silence again fell, broken only by the stranger’s fierce, vengeful mutterings which to me conveyed no distinct meaning.

“Madonna mia!” he cried aloud once, cringing in excruciating pain. “How I suffer! I wonder how long it must be before I give out. Dio! Is this the punishment of hell?”

Then he turned his eyes upon me—those wide-open, horrified eyes—in a look the remembrance of which is even to-day still before me, the recollection of which I shall carry with me to the grave.

There was something indescribable about that expression, uncanny, fascinating, inhuman. They were the eyes of a man who, though still alive, was obtaining his first glance into the awful mysteries of the eternity.

At half-past seven Tulloch returned and brought him a soothing draught, so that he slept, and I then left the sick-room to dress and breakfast.

With Mrs Gilbert, Sammy and I agreed that no word of the painful affair should be told to our fellow-guests, because illness in a boarding-house always causes the visitors to make excuses for departure. So we said nothing.

Sampson had some urgent business with his solicitor in the City that day, therefore I remained at home, acting as nurse to the unfortunate man whose end was now so near.

Three times during the day 

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