"I think he will be very much the worse, Don Pablo."
"I am your dear friend, Julian Hardwick," sneered the magician.
"I know better."
"Clever girl. But you do not know all," he taunted.
"Enough to be aware that you are an evil man, exercising more than human power. Also Dr. Eberstein has recalled to my recollection what I saw during the trance. I know who you are, Señor Narvaez, and what you are. With me you cannot masquerade as an angel of light."
"I leave that rôle to our friend here," scoffed the other with a shrug.
Eberstein did not take the slightest notice. With Narvaez he was very watchful, but intensely quiet: always on his guard, but never offering the fuel of words to kindle useless argument. And time being precious at the moment, he softly intimated to Alice that it would be as well to seek the bedroom immediately. Without objection the girl led the way, and shortly the whole party were in the presence of the Squire.
Enistor lay in bed, propped up with many pillows. Other than a shaded lamp on a small table beside him, there was no illumination save the crimson glimmer of the fire, so that the room was filled with a kind of artificial twilight, sinister and eerie. It was a large apartment furnished in that heavy cumbersome style prevalent during the first half of the last century, eminently comfortable but markedly inartistic. The green rep curtains of the bed were looped back to show the white suffering face and sunken eyes of the sick man, on whom the gaze of the quartette was centred. The silence was intense; as the rain had ceased, the wind had died away, and only the heavy breathing of those present, or the fall of a burning coal, broke the stillness. This calm before the storm suggested itself to Alice as much more terrible than the storm itself could possibly be. It seemed as though the whole of creation waited anxiously to hear what choice the dying man would make between evil and good. The words came slowly from him, as he fixed his weary eyes on Montrose with wondering inquiry.