 again. The night is
still: it listens: it is just leaning down to you, like a black priest to a
blacker penitent. Confess, lad: smooth naught down: be candid as a convicted,
justified, sanctified methody at an experience-meeting. Make yourself as wicked
as Beelzebub: it will ease your mind.«
    »As mean as Mammon, you would say. Yorke, if I got off horseback and laid
myself down across the road, would you have the goodness to gallop over me -
backwards and forwards - about twenty times?«
    »Wi' all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a coroner's
inquest.«
    »Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes
sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd: she has flushed up
crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, How do you do, Mr. Moore?
    My name had a magical influence over her: when others uttered it, she
changed countenance, - I know she did. She pronounced it herself in the most
musical of her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took an interest
in me; she was anxious about me; she wished me well; she sought, she seized
every opportunity to benefit me. I considered, paused, watched, weighed,
wondered: I could come to but one conclusion - this is love.
    I looked at her, Yorke: I saw, in her, youth and a species of beauty. I saw
power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing.
I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan
of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could I believe she
loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear
advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed
counsel, turn and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious, - my benefactress,
attached to me, enamoured of me, - I used to say so to myself; dwell on the
word; mouth it over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous
complacency, - with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired
even by esteem for her; indeed, I smiled in deep secrecy at her naïveté and
simplicity, in being the first to love, and to show it. That whip of yours seems
to have a good heavy handle, Yorke: you can swing it about your head and knock
