I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross this threshold to-night?"
I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.
"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him? They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"
"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of them?"
"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was the visible sufferer?"
"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious thing. If he alone were to suffer—"