Looking long and anxiously around to certify himself that none was indeed the witness of their conference, Crauford approached close to Glendower and laid his hand heavily upon his arm. At that moment a vivid and lengthened flash of lightning shot through the ruined arch, and gave to Crauford’s countenance a lustre which Glendower almost started to behold. The face, usually so smooth, calm, bright in complexion, and almost inexpressive from its extreme composure, now agitated by the excitement of the moment, and tinged by the ghastly light of the skies, became literally fearful. The cold blue eye glared out from its socket; the lips blanched, and, parting in act to speak, showed the white glistening teeth; and the corners of the mouth, drawn down in a half sneer, gave to the cheeks, rendered green and livid by the lightning, a lean and hollow appearance contrary to their natural shape.
“It is,” said Crauford, in a whispered but distinct tone, “a perilous secret that I am about to disclose to you. I indeed have no concern in it, but my lords the judges have, and you will not therefore be surprised if I forestall the ceremonies of their court and require an oath.”
Then, his manner and voice suddenly changing into an earnest and deep solemnity, as excitement gave him an eloquence more impressive, because unnatural to his ordinary moments, he continued: “By those lightnings and commotions above; by the heavens in which they revel in their terrible sports; by the earth, whose towers they crumble, and herbs they blight, and creatures they blast into cinders at their will; by Him whom, whatever be the name He bears, all men in the living world worship and tremble before; by whatever is sacred in this great and mysterious universe, and at the peril of whatever can wither and destroy and curse,—swear to preserve inviolable and forever the secret I shall whisper in your ear!”
The profound darkness which now, in the pause of the lightning, wrapped the scene, hid from Crauford all sight of the effect he had produced, and even the very outline of Glendower’s figure; but the gloom made more distinct the voice which thrilled through it upon Crauford’s ear.
“Promise me that there is not dishonour, nor crime, which is dishonour, in this confidence, and I swear.”
Crauford ground his teeth. He was about to reply impetuously, but he checked himself. “I am not going,” thought he, “to communicate my own share of this plot, but merely to state that a plot does exist, and then to point out in what manner he can profit by it; so far, therefore, there is no guilt in his concealment, and, consequently, no excuse for him to break his vow.”
Rapidly running over this self-argument, he said aloud, “I promise!”
“And,” rejoined Glendower, “I swear!”
At the close of this sentence another flash of lightning again made darkness visible, and Glendower, beholding the countenance of his companion, again recoiled: for its mingled haggardness and triumph seemed to his excited imagination the very expression of a fiend! “Now,” said Crauford, relapsing into his usual careless tone, somewhat enlivened by his sneer, “now, then, you must not interrupt me in my disclosure by those starts and exclamations which break from your philosophy like sparks from flint. Hear me throughout.”
And, bending down, till his mouth reached Glendower’s ear, he commenced his recital. Artfully hiding his own agency, the master-spring of the gigantic machinery of fraud, which, too mighty for a single hand, required an assistant,—throwing into obscurity the sin, while, knowing the undaunted courage and desperate fortunes of the man, he did not affect to conceal the danger; expatiating upon the advantages, the immense and almost inexhaustible resources of wealth which his scheme suddenly opened upon one in the deepest abyss of poverty, and slightly sketching, as if to excite vanity, the ingenuity and genius by which the scheme originated, and could only be sustained,—Crauford’s detail of temptation, in its knowledge of human nature, in its adaptation of act to principles, in its web-like craft of self-concealment, and the speciousness of its lure, was indeed a splendid masterpiece of villanous invention.