As the days went slowly by he strove mightily to adapt himself to the dreary, monotonous life which he was now leading. Roversmire had indeed been able to draw entertainment from his stores of knowledge, his vast experience, and his power of releasing his soul from his body whenever earthly things grew too irksome to him, but Adrian, having lived all his life in a frivolous world, had not a well-stored mind to draw upon, consequently being debarred by his strange position from his ordinary pleasures he did not know how to employ his time. Furthermore, the memory of his folly stung him sharply, and the forced inaction of the life of seclusion, to which he was now condemned, made his tortured soul writhe in its new dwelling-place with a hideous sense of impotence and weariness.
Day by day the papers informed him of the progress which Philip Trevanna was making towards recovery, and the astonishment excited by his own strange disappearance, but he was powerless to come forward, explain the circumstances of the affair, and resume his place among his fellow-men. He had sinned in permitting his temper to lead him to so nearly kill a human being, and this was his punishment—this dreary life of forced inaction, of agonising remorse, and of terrible self-reproach. Truly he was paying dearly for the one mad act of his life, and to his mind the punishment appeared immeasurably severe to the magnitude of the crime. Had Philip Trevanna died, he would have accepted his terrible situation with sullen apathy, looking upon it as a fit reward for taking the life of a fellow-man, but seeing that his friend was recovering, that the crime was unpremeditated, and that Trevanna had provoked him beyond all powers of endurance, it seemed bitterly hard that he should have to pass an indefinite period in a constant state of torture.
This unpleasant state of things was not rendered any more bearable by the presence of Dentham, who, Adrian knew, kept a constant watch upon his every action. What the man suspected he could not tell, but that he was suspicious of the life led by Dr. Michael Roversmire was certain, as Adrian felt rather than saw the stealthy glances with which he watched his goings out and comings in, gettings up and layings down. This, in itself, was enough to irritate a sensitive mind, but added to the appalling tortures the unhappy young man was constantly feeling, it drove him nearly to the verge of distraction, and he longed for something to happen which would give him, if not a release, at least change of life. At last an event happened which caused Adrian to make up his mind to leave his seclusion, and which also caused considerable anxiety to the enquiring mind of Mr. Dentham.
One day, about two weeks after the transformation had taken place, Adrian saw in the paper a notice of a reward offered for the discovery of the whereabouts of Adrian Lancaster.
"I'm wanted by the police, I suppose," he muttered gloomily to himself; but this idea was soon dispelled when he read the last lines of the advertisement, which said that all information was to be given to O. M., The Nook, Marlow, Bucks.
"It's Olive! Olive!" cried Adrian, throwing down the paper, "she wants to find out where I am and help me, God bless her; if I could only reveal myself to her—but it's impossible. Dr. Roversmire is a stranger to her, and if I told her what had taken place, she would look upon me as a madman. What am I to do?—God help me, what am I to do?"
He walked up and down the room, plucking at his long grey beard as if he would tear from his young soul this mark of age.
"She could never love me as I am now," he said, clasping his hands, "for that would be treachery to my memory, and this face is not the one to win any girl's love—did not Roversmire himself say that the woman he loved refused to return his passion?—stay! perhaps if I look through this desk I may find out the name of the woman he loved, and go and see her—something may come of it, though I dread even to hope that things will turn out well."
Sitting down at the desk near a deep, wide window, he unlocked it with the key which was placed therein, and began to turn over the papers in the hope of finding some clue to the name of this girl, whose rejection of Roversmire's suit had indirectly led up to the catastrophe which had happened to himself.
He was about an hour looking through the papers, but found nothing likely to lead to discovery, until at length he found a locked book, which he immediately guessed was the diary of Roversmire.